Faith Leaders File Supreme Court Brief Urging Protection for 350,000 Haitian Families

Oral argument in Trump v. Miot is scheduled for April 29

WASHINGTON, DC — Faith in Action, together with 57 faith leaders from across the United States, has filed an amicus curiae brief urging the Supreme Court to protect Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 350,000 Haitian nationals. The Court will hear oral argument in Trump v. Miot on April 29.

“As a pastor who serves Haitian families every day, I know what is at stake in this case. These are not statistics — they are our congregants, our neighbors, our brothers and sisters in faith. Haiti is in crisis by every measure, and sending families back there now would be a death sentence. We filed this brief because our faith demands that we speak — and because the law demands that the Secretary of Homeland Security look at the facts before making a decision that will determine whether people live or die.”

— Reverend Doctor Keny Felix, Senior pastor of Bethel Evangelical Baptist Church in Miami and President of the Southern Baptist Convention National Haitian Fellowship.

The brief draws on the firsthand experience of faith leaders who minister to Haitian diaspora communities across the United States and support churches, orphanages, and community development programs in Haiti. They describe a country in accelerating collapse — where gang violence has displaced more than 1.4 million people, homicide rates are nearly nineteen times that of the United States on a per-capita basis, and the U.S. State Department advises Americans not to travel there for any reason. For many of their congregants, the faith leaders told the Court, “losing TPS status will be a death sentence.”

The brief argues that Secretary Noem violated both the TPS statute and the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to conduct the fact-based review Congress required before terminating Haiti’s designation. Rather than engage with overwhelming and uncontroverted evidence of Haiti’s deterioration, Secretary Noem treated “Haitian TPS holders as instruments of international messaging rather than as human beings whose lives are at stake.” Her decision, the brief argues, “reflects precisely the kind of arbitrary exercise of executive discretion that Congress enacted TPS to prevent.”

Congress created TPS, the brief explains, to replace a discretionary, ad hoc system with a mandatory, fact-based framework — one rooted in what Representative Joe Moakley, the program’s primary sponsor, called “our deep moral obligation to protect innocent victims.” The faith leaders ask the Court to hold the Government to that obligation and require that the statute’s process be followed.

The faith leaders also describe the contributions Haitian TPS holders make to the communities where they live and worship. “In Springfield, Ohio, and elsewhere,” the brief notes, Haitian TPS holders “contribute to the economic and spiritual revitalization of their communities.” They are, the brief says, “taxpayers, workers, entrepreneurs, students, friends, valued community members and congregants, and in every other meaningful way cherished members of the societies in which they live.”

The faith leaders named in the brief represent a broader coalition of more than 150 religious leaders who sought to join the filing. Due to the case’s expedited timeline, not all were able to participate. Many of those same leaders have since added their names to a separate letter to Senate leadership calling for immediate congressional action to protect Haiti TPS.
The brief was filed by attorneys at Barack Ferrazzano Kirschbaum & Nagelberg LLP on behalf of Faith in Action and 57 named faith leaders. Faith in Action and participating faith leaders are available for media comment.

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Faith in Action is a global network of faith-based organizations working across the United States and in 15 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Through Faith in Action International and A Way Forward in Haiti, Faith in Action supports grassroots faith-based community organizing in Haiti and the Haitian diaspora.