FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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BALTIMORE, MD (September 4, 2025) – Attorney General Anthony G. Brown today joined a coalition of 18 attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in Miot, et. al. v. Trump, et al. in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia. The brief supports a challenge to the Trump administration's unlawful attempt to terminate Haiti's Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation and strip legal immigration status from hundreds of thousands of Haitians living and working in the United States.
“Maryland has welcomed thousands of Haitians in recent years because they fill critical jobs in healthcare, construction, and other essential services that keep our communities running," said Attorney General Brown. “The Trump administration's unlawful attempt to strip away these protections – without any evidence that Haiti's dangerous conditions have improved and despite our own State Department warning it's too dangerous to travel there – would cruelly upend the lives of these Marylanders who have done nothing wrong."
TPS is a humanitarian immigration status created by Congress to protect foreign nationals who cannot safely return to their home country because of war, natural disaster, or other extraordinary conditions. TPS allows recipients to live and work in the United States as long as their home country has a TPS designation. Haitian immigrants have been eligible for TPS since 2010, when a devastating earthquake hit the country. The protections have continuously been extended due to unsafe conditions in Haiti, including widespread violence, homelessness, and starvation.
On July 1, 2025, the Trump administration sought to formally terminate Haiti's TPS status without any evidence that the dangerous conditions in Haiti had improved and despite the fact that the U.S. State Department continues to classify Haiti as a “Level 4: Do Not Travel" country – its highest risk designation.
In its brief, the coalition argue that unlawfully terminating Haiti's TPS status would separate families, damage economies, deplete workforces, increase health care costs, and harm public health and safety. Across states, thousands of TPS recipients providing important public services as health care providers, teachers, entrepreneurs, construction workers, and more would be stripped of their legal status and forced to either face life in uncertainty and vulnerability without legal protections or return to a country that continues to have exceedingly dangerous conditions that pose ongoing risk of violence and human rights abuses.
TPS-eligible Haitians contribute $4.4 billion annually to the U.S. economy. Sixty-nine percent of Haitian immigrants aged 16 and older were members of the civilian labor force in 2022, with high rates of participation in health care support and service industries. Furthermore, a recent estimate found that 75,000 TPS-eligible Haitians work in labor-short industries.
In submitting its brief, the coalition is asking the Court to grant the Plaintiffs' motion to postpone the effective date of the termination of Haiti's TPS status, which would protect the hundreds of thousands of Haitians legally in the United States under the program while the litigation proceeds.
Joining Attorney General Brown in submitting this brief are the attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawai‛i, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.
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