Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has shown little interest in restraining her rhetoric lately, posting and posturing with the apparent confidence that having President Donald Trump firmly at her back would shield her from real consequences. That swagger didn’t hold up for long.
In a sharp and very public setback, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a stay blocking Noem’s directive to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for thousands of Haitian immigrants living and working in the United States — a ruling that landed just as her toughest talk was echoing back at her.
Judge Ana Reyes made Noem’s humiliation stick when she even used Noem’s hateful and bigoted words from a December social media post about immigrants against her in an 83-page opinion issued Monday, Feb. 2, denying the secretary’s plan to strip Haitians of their TPS, according to news outlets.
In December Noem wrote on X several days before announcing the decision to revoke TPS for Haitian immigrants that after meeting with President Donald Trump, “I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”
“Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat, and the unyielding love of freedom—not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits owed to AMERICANS,” a spiteful Noem continued before adding, “WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.”
Reyes’ scathing opinion threw Noem’s words right back in her face.
“The plaintiffs are five Haitian TPS holders. They are not, it emerges, ‘killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies,’” Reyes wrote.
“They are instead: Fritz Emmanuel Lesly Miot, a neuroscientist researching Alzheimer’s disease, Rudolph Civil, a software engineer at a national bank, Marlene Gail Noble, a laboratory assistant in a toxicology department, Marica Merline Laguerre, a college economics major, id., and Vilbrun Dorsainvil, a full-time registered nurse.”
But Reyes wasn’t done.
“One of those (her word) ‘damn’ countries is Haiti. Three days before making the above post, Secretary Noem announced she would terminate Haiti’s TPS designation as of February 3, 2026,” Reyes continued.
One of the judge’s conclusions in the case: it was “substantially likely” that Noem had decided to end TPS for Haitians over “hostility to nonwhite immigrants.”
“Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants ‘killers, leeches, entitlement junkies,’ and any other inapt name she wants. Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the APA to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that,” Reyes concluded in staying Noem directive.
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“OUCH!!!,” Threads user and lawyer Anne P. Mitchell wrote then added, “YES!!! JUDGE EVISCERATES NOEM IN TPS TAKEDOWN!!”
Daily Beast readers on MSN also had plenty to say about Noem and the Trump administration’s cruelty.
Aristotle’s Cat wondered, “How’d we get this blend of bigotry, mean-spiritedness, intolerance, and sheer stupidity into the leadership levels of our nation. It saddens me deeply that THIS is what our great nation has become. We’d better turn it around or our future is dim at best.”
MSN reader Eric Braun was pointed in his response. “Rather than base punishment on race, national origin, immigration status… how about we base it on behavior? Commit a crime, go to jail. Coming from Haiti (legally) is not a crime. Shooting innocent citizens dead in the street is.”
Braun referring there to what critics have called Noem’s ICE thugs in Minneapolis, where federal agents have killed two innocent Americans in just the past few weeks as unrest over ICE’s presence has roiled the Twin Cities.
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And reader Anne Younger described the opinion and Noem’s inhumanity this way.
“They call the judge an ‘Activist’ and denigrate her ruling as ‘opinion.’ But as the judge pointed out, we should not abide such a high official as the Secretary of Homeland Security to flout law and express a racist attack on a country that has followed the law. They are here legally, and until the law changes, they remain here legally. A leader is welcome to a personal opinion, but Noem’s opinion is not the law.”
The Trump administration doesn’t care. The assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS, Tricia McLaughlin says the department is appealing all the way to the high court if necessary.
“Supreme Court, here we come,” McLaughlin posted on X.
She called Reyes’ decision “lawless activism,” before complaining about the state of affairs in Haiti.
“Haiti’s TPS was granted following an earthquake that took place over 15 years ago, it was never intended to be a de facto amnesty program, yet that’s how previous administrations have used it for decades. Temporary means temporary and the final word will not be from an activist judge legislating from the bench,” she added.
Yes, the horrendous earthquake in Haiti in 2010 was 15 years ago when more than an estimated 220,000 people died and more than 300,000 were injured. But the island nation is still struggling to recover.
Even the U.S. still acknowledges that.
The State Department still has a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory in place warning Americans against visiting Haiti, which undermines the Trump administration’s argument that Haitian immigrants’ TPS should be revoked and they should be sent home.
