HAITI « A Victory Over Trump’s Racist Policies »

“TPS: Victory Over Trump!” was the headline of the weekly Haïti Liberté on 17 April 2019. Indeed, it is not every day that Trump — the supreme head of U.S. imperialism — is forced to back down. Yet that is what just happened in the United States. On 11 April, a federal court judge ruled in favour of Family Action Network Movement (FANM) and Haïti Liberté, following a lawsuit by Haïti Liberté, FANM and nine Haitian citizens against the Trump administration. 

The lawsuit targeted the Department of Homeland Security for putting an end to Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which had been granted to 60,000 Haitian refugees by the U.S. administration in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake that destroyed the island. This status had temporarily allowed those workers and their families to live and work in the United States. 

Trump announced in November 2017, in his anti-worker and anti-immigrant rage, that he was putting an end to TPS for the 60,000 Haitians who benefitted from this status; he had then announced measures of the same kind against immigrants from Central America. The newspapers Haïti Liberté (Haiti), The Organizer (United States) and La Tribune des Travailleurs (France) have reported regularly on these anti-immigrant attacks and on the fight to maintain TPS. 

On 11 April 11, following the fight waged by our comrades from Haïti Liberté and FANM, Federal District Judge William F. Kuntz ruled, in a 145-page text, fully in favour of the defendants and their arguments. Obviously we expect that the administration will move to appeal. But for the moment, Judge Kuntz has blocked the Trump administration’s decision to put an end to TPS. This is a victory for our comrades of Haïti Liberté and for the activists of the U.S. labour organizations who are fighting against Trump’s racist and anti-labour policies!