If you thought that district judges meddling with Trump’s executive authority was over after the recent Supreme Court decision, one judge doesn’t seem to think it applies to him.
On Tuesday, Judge Brian M. Cogan of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York blocked the administration’s plan to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than half a million Haitian nationals living in the United States. Haiti’s TPS designation was granted after a catastrophic earthquake in 2010. The idea was to give Haitians already in the U.S. a reprieve from deportation because of the dire situation back home. This ruling is yet another example of the judiciary overstepping its bounds and tying the hands of an administration trying to enforce the law and protect American interests.
The Department of Homeland Security, under Secretary Kristi Noem, announced plans to move up the expiration date for Haiti’s TPS designation from Feb. 3, 2026, to Aug. 3, 2025. The rationale was straightforward: conditions in Haiti have improved enough since the devastating 2010 earthquake that the original justification for TPS no longer holds.
“The environmental situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. “We encourage these individuals to take advantage of the Department’s resources in returning to Haiti, which can be arranged through the CBP Home app. Haitian nationals may pursue lawful status through other immigration benefit requests, if eligible.”
That’s not some radical position; it’s simply following the law as written, which requires that TPS be temporary and based on actual conditions in the home country.
But Cogan decided to be a king in a robe and claimed in his ruling that Noem’s decision “exceeded her authority” and violated the Administrative Procedure Act — a favorite tool of the left for blocking any executive action it doesn’t like.
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He argued that Haitians with TPS had a “reasonable expectation” that their status would last until the original 2026 date and that the government’s move forced them to “start planning now if they have any hope of managing and surviving a possible return to Haiti.” In other words, the judge is saying that because these individuals have settled in — enrolling in schools, taking jobs, starting medical treatments — they’re entitled to stay until the very last day of their previously announced protection, regardless of changing circumstances.
I guess judges can just make things up now.
This is judicial activism, plain and simple. The law gives the executive branch the authority to determine when TPS is warranted and when it’s not. It doesn’t say that once a date is set, it’s set in stone, immune from any reassessment or policy shift. Yet here we are, with a federal judge substituting his judgment for that of the elected administration, all under the guise of “harm” to the migrants who, by definition, were never supposed to be here permanently.
The Biden administration, of course, set the 2026 expiration date, but the Trump administration recognized that conditions had improved and tried to bring some reality back into the process. For its trouble, it's accused of heartlessness and lawlessness, when in fact it's simply doing what the law requires: reassessing TPS as conditions change.
This ruling is a warning shot. It shows just how difficult it will be to restore order to our immigration system when activist judges stand ready to block any effort to enforce the law. The message to future administrations is that no matter how temporary a program is supposed to be, once it’s in place, the courts will do everything possible to make it permanent.
That’s not how our system is supposed to work, and it’s high time Congress and the executive branch push back against this judicial overreach. America deserves an immigration policy that puts its citizens first, not one that unelected judges with an open-borders agenda dictate.
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