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Federal judge blocks Trump administration plan to remove protected status for Haitians in US
A federal judge in Washington DC on Monday blocked the Trump administration from stripping Temporary Protected Status from up to 350,000 Haitians, which allows them to legally live and work in the United States during the turmoil in their homeland.
Judge Ana Reyes issued a temporary stay that prevents the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, from implementing her decision to remove the status, known as TPS, on Tuesday.
Reyes began her decision by putting the status into historical context. “On December 2, 1783, then-Commander-in-Chief George Washington penned: ‘America is open to receive not only the Opulent & respected Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions,’” the judge wrote. “More than two centuries later, Congress reaffirmed President Washington’s vision by establishing the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program.”
Reyes notes that Noem, in announcing her decision on X (formerly known as Twitter), referred to those seeking refuge in the US as “killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies.”
She then notes that the plaintiffs who asked her to block the order, five Haitian TPS holders, “are not, it emerges, ‘killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies.’”
“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…; and Vilbrun Dorsainvil, a full-time registered nurse”, the judge added. “They claim that Secretary Noem’s decision violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA)… and the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”
At the end of her decision, Reys wrote:
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.
There has been widespread speculation that, if TPS is removed from Haitians, the Trump administration could move to quickly deport Haitians from Springfield, Ohio, the immigrant community Donald Trump falsely accused, in a 2024 debate, of eating the dogs and cats of longtime residents.
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JD Vance still angry his false claim Haitian refugees were 'illegal immigrants' was debunked in 2024 debate
The US vice-president, JD Vance, complained on social media on Monday about Democrats who point out that asylum seekers who are awaiting adjudication of their claims are not in the United States illegally.
“If your position is that a person can claim asylum after traversing eight countries, and they are therefore ‘legal immigrants’ because the president ignores the law and allows them to stay, then you’re advocating for an open border,” Vance wrote.
Vance was responding to a comment from a Rhode Island congressman, Seth Magaziner, who pointed out that the family of the five-year-old boy who was detained in Minneapolis while wearing a bunny hat, Liam Conejo Ramos, is in the US legally, since they applied for asylum. “Many of the families ICE has been snatching off the streets are like this. Immigrants who entered legally!” Magaziner wrote.
“This reminds me of when Margaret Brennan ‘fact checked’ me at the VP debate,” Vance responded.
What he was referring to was a moment in his 2024 vice-presidential debate against Tim Walz when Vance said that social and economic problems in Springfield, Ohio “and in communities all across this country,” were caused by bringing in “millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans” for homes, jobs and health care.
After Vance spoke, one debate moderator, Margaret Brennan, said: “just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status. Temporary protected status.”
Vance was enraged by what he called a violation of the debate rules. “The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact check”, he said. He then went on to repeat his claim that “an illegal migrant” applying for asylum or temporary protected status, and being granted the legal right to live and work in the US for a time, was effectively “the facilitation of illegal immigration… by our own leadership.”
A federal judge’s order on Monday, paused the Trump administration’s plan to strip legal status from 350,000 Haitians in the United States, including those in Springfield, Ohio that Vance amplified conspiracy theories about in 2024.
Sam Levin
Immediately after a US border patrol agent shot two people in Oregon last month, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the targets were “vicious” gang members connected to a prior shooting and alleged they had “attempted to run over” officers with their vehicle.
In the weeks since, key parts of the federal government’s narrative have fallen apart.
The events took place on the afternoon of 8 January, one day after a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.
According to a DHS press release and social media posts issued the following day, border patrol agents were conducting a “targeted” stop of a vehicle in Portland occupied by two members of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang. Yorlenys Zambrano-Contreras, a woman in the passenger seat, had been “involved” in a Portland shooting last year, the agency wrote.
During the border patrol stop, the driver, Luis Niño-Moncada, “weaponized their vehicle against” officers, DHS said, prompting an agent “to defend himself and others” by shooting the occupants. Zambrano-Contreras was hit in the chest, Niño-Moncada was hit in the arm and both were hospitalized, then taken into federal custody, DHS noted. The agents were uninjured.
But court records obtained by the Guardian reveal a Department of Justice prosecutor later directly contradicted DHS’ Tren de Aragua statements in court, telling a judge, “We’re not suggesting … [Niño-Moncada] is a gang member.” An FBI affidavit issued following the incident also suggests that in the previous shooting cited by DHS, Zambrano-Contreras was not a suspect, but rather a reported victim of a sexual assault and robbery. Neither Niño-Moncada or Zambrano-Contreras have prior criminal convictions, their lawyers have said.
Immigration and criminal justice experts who reviewed the case records characterized the federal government’s communications as a “smear campaign” against the two Venezuelan immigrants, with mischaracterizations of their pasts and unsubstantiated allegations of criminality.
Federal judge blocks Trump administration plan to remove protected status for Haitians in US
A federal judge in Washington DC on Monday blocked the Trump administration from stripping Temporary Protected Status from up to 350,000 Haitians, which allows them to legally live and work in the United States during the turmoil in their homeland.
Judge Ana Reyes issued a temporary stay that prevents the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, from implementing her decision to remove the status, known as TPS, on Tuesday.
Reyes began her decision by putting the status into historical context. “On December 2, 1783, then-Commander-in-Chief George Washington penned: ‘America is open to receive not only the Opulent & respected Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions,’” the judge wrote. “More than two centuries later, Congress reaffirmed President Washington’s vision by establishing the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program.”
Reyes notes that Noem, in announcing her decision on X (formerly known as Twitter), referred to those seeking refuge in the US as “killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies.”
She then notes that the plaintiffs who asked her to block the order, five Haitian TPS holders, “are not, it emerges, ‘killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies.’”
“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…; and Vilbrun Dorsainvil, a full-time registered nurse”, the judge added. “They claim that Secretary Noem’s decision violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA)… and the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”
At the end of her decision, Reys wrote:
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.
There has been widespread speculation that, if TPS is removed from Haitians, the Trump administration could move to quickly deport Haitians from Springfield, Ohio, the immigrant community Donald Trump falsely accused, in a 2024 debate, of eating the dogs and cats of longtime residents.
House swears in Democrat to replace Houston congressman who died in office, narrowing Republican majority
Christian Menefee, a Texas Democrat who won a special election on Saturday, was sworn in as a congressman on Monday, further narrowing the slim Republican majority in the US House. There are now 218 Republicans and 214 Democrats in the House, with three vacancies.
“It’s been more than 330 days since the people of the 18th Congressional district had representation, had a voice in Congress,” Menefee noted in his first remarks on the House floor, referring to the long delay by the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, in calling a special election to replace Sylvester Turner, who died in March 2025.
Clintons agree to testify to House inquiry on Epstein
Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed on Monday to testify to a House oversight committee inquiry on Jeffrey Epstein, a spokesman for the former president confirmed in asocial media post.
Angel Ureña, the former president’s deputy chief of staff, responded to a post on X from the Republican-led House oversight committee, threatening to hold both Clintons in contempt, by writing:
They negotiated in good faith. You did not. They told you under oath what they know, but you don’t care. But the former President and former Secretary of State will be there. They look forward to setting a precedent that applies to everyone.
Earlier on Monday, the Republican chair of the oversight committee, James Comer, rejected an offer from the former president to conduct a transcribed interview for the House committee’s investigation into Epstein.
A committee letter to the Clintons’ lawyers indicated the couple had offered for Bill Clinton to conduct a transcribed interview on “matters related to the investigations and prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein” and for Hillary Clinton to submit a sworn declaration.
The Republican-controlled oversight panel had advanced criminal contempt of Congress charges last month, if the Clintons refused to testify.
Trump again denies spending time on Jeffrey Epstein's island, but seems to refer to late sex offender by his first name
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Donald Trump repeated his denial that he ever visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, but appeared to catch himself referring to the late sex offender he socialized with for most of two decades by his first name.
Asked if he does intend to sue Trevor Noah, the host of the Grammys who joked about Trump and Bill Clinton needing an island to hang out on together now that Epstein’s Little Saint James was out of the picture, the president said: “Yeah, well… he said that I spent time on Jeffrey’s— Jeffrey Epstein’s island. I didn’t.”
“No, he made a statement about me and Jeffrey Epstein’s- I have nothing to do with that. I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein,” he added.
Trump went on to suggest that the files into the federal investigations of Epstein released by his justice department raised “a lot of questions” about his ties to Democrats like Bill Clinton “but nothing on me”.
Trump’s anger at Noah over the indirect suggestion that he had visited Epstein’s island somewhat obscured the fact that there is also no evidence that Clinton spent any time on the island.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that Clinton visited Epstein’s island dozens of times, usually to deflect questions about his own friendship with the notorious pedophile, but there remains no evidence that he was ever there.
A spokesman for Clinton flatly denied the allegation in 2019, after Epstein was charged with federal sex crimes in New York, saying the former president “has never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico, or his residence in Florida.”
“President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York,” the former president’s spokesman, Angel Ureña, also said in 2019.
Clinton’s spokesman added that all four trips he took on Epstein’s private plane, to Europe, Asia and Africa, took place in 2002 and 2003, and other people – including staff, supporters of the Clinton Foundation and the former president’s Secret Service detail – “traveled on every leg of every trip.”
Trump’s own chief of staff, Susie Wiles, admitted to Vanity Fair in December that Trump’s wild claim that Clinton had visited Epstein’s island “28 times” was false. “There is no evidence” of any such trips, Wiles acknowledged, or of anything incriminating about Clinton in the files. “The president was wrong about that” she said.
In a 2015 email, Epstein himself told the owner of the New York Daily News, Mortimer Zuckerman, the allegation that Clinton visited his island, made by one victim of Epstein’s abuse, was false and could be used as a way to destroy her credibility.
The victim, Epstein wrote in a typo-laden email, was a “story teller” who “crafted much of it out of whole cloth.. part of her story , is that she was at multiple orgies with clinton and speciifically, the minute details of a dinner had on the island with him… he sat on my left. came by black. heli. flown by ghislaine. clinton was NEVER EVER there, never.”
Epstein encouraged the Daily News owner to have someone “break the story” that this detail in the accuser’s story was false, “making it all apparent that it was fantasy. and delusional.”
On the same day, Epstein also urged a reporter for the New York Times to report that the allegation about Clinton visiting his island was false, again as a way to undermine the accuser’s credibility.
Trump says he supports move to have federal agents in Minneapolis wear body cameras
Donald Trump just told reporters that he supports a decision on Monday by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, to ensure that every federal officer in Minneapolis wears a body camera during the ongoing immigration crackdown in the city.
“Effective immediately we are deploying body cameras to every officer in the field in Minneapolis,” Noem announced, in response to pressure from Democrats in Congress for greater accountability in the wake of two fatal shootings of protesters by federal immigration agents in the city
Noem added that “the body camera program will be expanded nationwide” if Congress agrees to provide funding. Furhter funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and US border patrol, is currently under negotiation between the White House and Democrats.
Although witness video recorded during the shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, revealed that the administration had lied repeatedly about what led officers to fire at least 10 shots at him from close range, Trump insisted on Monday that body cameras “generally tend to be good for law enforcement because people can’t lie about what’s happening.”
Ro Khanna repeats call for court-appointed special master to properly redact Epstein files
Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman, has seconded a call from survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse for all of the documents released by the US justice department to be taken down from the internet and reviewed by a court-appointed special master to ensure proper redactions.
After the survivors documented multiple examples of the names and other identifying information of victims being posted online without redaction, Khanna said in a statement that this is what he and Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman, “had asked the court to appoint a special master. Exactly what we wanted to avoid.”
Survivors of Epstein's abuse ask judges to order justice department to take down files and make proper redactions
A group of survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse have asked federal judges to order the US justice department to take down the entire public archive of files released in recent days and make proper redactions to remove identifying information of the victims.
In a letter to two federal judges in Manhattan requesting an emergency order, lawyers for the victims say that the justice department posted millions of records from the federal investigations into Epstein, the late sex offender “while failing to redact victim names and other personally identifying information in thousands of instances”.
In the letter, the lawyers list nine examples in documents released on Friday:
1. Documents in which Minor Victim 1 had her name revealed 20 times in a single document. After reporting the violation, DOJ redacted her name three additional times-leaving 17 instances still unredacted as of this filing.
2. An email listing 32 minor child victims, with only one name redacted and 31 left visible-despite DOJ’s possession of those names.
3. FBI 302 victim statements with full first and last names unredacted, including for minor victims.
4. Handwritten FBI interview notes with minor victims’ full names unredacted at the top and throughout.
5. Documents containing victims’ names alongside dates of birth, bank information, driver’s license numbers, email addresses, or home addresses.
6. Documents where victims’ names are redacted in some places but not others within the same document.
7. Documents where redactions are pencil-thin, revealing the complete name and email address beneath.
8. Documents where photographs are properly redacted in one instance and appear fully unredacted nearby.
9. Hundreds of documents exposing the names of four women who have been in near-constant communication with DOJ since December requesting protection.
The justice department, attorneys for the victims wrote, “cannot plausibly characterize this as error, negligence, or bureaucratic failure. The task was straightforward: take the list of known victims and redact those names everywhere they appear.”
Instead, they add, the department has “placed the burden on victims to search for and discover their own exposure-after the damage had already occurred.”
The victims ask the judges to order the justice department to: immediately take down “the DOJ website hosting Epstein materials”; perform a “comprehensive name-based search of all hosted documents using the victim list”; carry out “Proper redaction of all references to victims’ first, last, or full names”'; and appoint “an independent Special Master to oversee redaction and republication”.
Trump says that he's working to get House to pass spending bills
Donald Trump said that he’s “working hard” with House speaker Mike Johnson to pass a five-bill funding package, and stopgap measure to keep the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funded. A reminder that the Senate passed the legislation last week, and the lower chamber is teeing the bills up for a vote this week.
“There can be NO CHANGES at this time,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “We cannot have another long, pointless, and destructive Shutdown that will hurt our Country so badly – One that will not benefit Republicans or Democrats.”
Johnson has an uphill battle with many Democratic representatives suggesting that they’ll vote against the bills because they don’t trust the administration to negotiate a long term DHS funding bill in good faith.
Here's a recap of the day so far
A five-bill funding package, as well as a stopgap measure to keep the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funded is set for a procedural vote today. It will then head to the House floor this week, where it stands to face opposition from Democrats and some Republicans. The legislation passed the Senate last week, after Democratic lawmakers and a some GOP defectors said that Congress needs to negotiate the DHS’s funding and the tactics used in raids. This comes after the widespread backlash throughout the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota, and the fatal shootings of two US citizens.
Donald Trump has announced that after a call with India’s prime minister Narendra Modi they had agreed to lower tariffs between their countries. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said that India had agreed to halt purchases of Russian oil, committed to reducing tariffs on US goods to zero, and committed to purchasing over $500bn worth ofAmerican products.
Also on Truth Social today, Donald Trump reiterated his intention to sue Michael Wolff because he “conspired in order to damage me and/or my Presidency”, and reasserted that he never visited Jeffrey Epstein’s island home. A reminder that Trump said on Saturday evening that he would probably sue Wolff, the author of an unauthorized biography of the president, for “conspiring” with Epstein to damage him politically.
Immigrant right groups, nonprofits, legal organizations and several citizens have sued the Trump administration over the visa ban on 75 countries, issued in January. In the lawsuit, they accuse secretary of state Marco Rubio and the state department of implementing a “categorical nationality-based ban on legal immigration” for nationals of 75 countries based on “an unsupported and demonstrably false claim that nationals of the covered countries migrate to the United States to improperly rely on cash welfare and are likely to become ‘public charges’”.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics said today that the closely watched jobs report for January will be not be released on Friday because of the partial government shutdown. “The release will be rescheduled upon the resumption of government funding,” Emily Liddel, associate commissioner at the BLS, said in a statement.
