Documents Reveal How Trump's Racist "America First" Agenda Pressured DHS to End Humanitarian Program

We’ve compiled a list of all documents presented to the court related to the motion for a Preliminary Injunction.

Six new government documents filed for the first time in court yesterday tell all you need to know about the Trump administration and TPS. Click on the boxes below to access the PDF documents.

1. The Trump Administration is Determined to End TPS to Further their Racist and Anti-Immigrant “America First” Agenda

In her personal notes to herself, anticipating the impending cancellation of TPS for over 250,000 people from El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, then-Acting DHS Secretary Duke wrote:

“The TPS program must end…This conclusion is the result of an America first view of the TPS decision.”

2. The White House intervened with maximum pressure to end TPS

On the eve of major TPS decisions, the White House convened a Cabinet-level meeting to pressure then DHS Secretary Duke to terminate TPS for Haiti and three Central American countries.

3. And relied on anti-immigrant hate groups embedded in DHS

A former director of anti-immigrant hate group FAIR – now a USCIS senior advisor – got his feet wet in a brand-new job by rewriting a Haiti TPS recommendation memo to get to the “conclusion we are looking for”—full-throated “support [of] termination” of TPS for over 50,000 Haitians.

4. To End TPS, the Trump Administration Was Willing to Ignore the Facts...

In a candid assessment of his own agency’s memo recommending an end to TPS for Sudan, USCIS Director Cissna wrote:

“This memo reads like one person who strongly supports extending TPS for Sudan wrote everything up to the recommendation section, and then someone who opposes extension snuck up behind the first guy, clubbed him over the head, pushed his senseless body out of the way, and finished the memo. Am I missing something?”

5. And the law...

In response to political pressure to end TPS, career officials at TPS explained that the only way the agency could end TPS was to change its interpretation of the law. Whereas previous administrations—Democrat and Republican alike—considered current country conditions, the Trump Administration would look only to whether the original conditions for TPS designation remained. This sudden and unexplained departure from past practice violates the law.

6. And they don’t care who they hurt to do it

In response to the official announcement of DHS’s decision to terminate TPS for Sudan, the State Department explained, “It is likely that the Sudanese Government could view the current language and inaccuracies in the [DHS Federal Register Notice] as a green light from the USG to force the return of internally displaced persons…to deadly conflict-afflicted areas.”