Government

FOIA Documents Reveals Trump's Search For Pretext Against Haitians

The decision to deny TPS status to Haitians was marred by Trumpian bigotry.

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Ouest, Haiti, alleged shithole.

What Donald Trump, president of White America, calls immigrants is gross. Rapists. Animals. Everybody who is not-racist finds Trump’s language abhorrent, while everybody who merely likes to think of themselves as not-racist struggles to understand what all the fuss is about.

But more damaging than words are Trump’s actions. Donald Trump has been the most openly bigoted modern president. New documents released thanks to a FOIA request show just how that bigotry has metastasized against one group. From WNYC:

In the spring of 2017, a high level Trump administration official asked for details on how many Haitians with Temporary Protected Status were on public benefits, how many were convicted of “crimes of any kind,” and how many had been in the country unlawfully before being granted TPS.

When told by staffers that this information wasn’t relevant to granting TPS and that the existing data “wasn’t good,” she continued to press ahead. She explained that the Homeland Security Secretary “is going to need this to make a final decision” that spring on whether to extend TPS for Haitians. They were granted the right to stay in the U.S. after a devastating 2010 earthquake…

“Keep in mind that this is in no way relevant to deciding whether to extend or terminate TPS designation to a country under the statute,” said Sejal Zota, legal director of the National Immigration Project, which requested the emails with the NYU Immigrant Rights Clinic. “It really suggests that they were attempting to manufacture a basis to deny TPS. That they went on this fishing expedition to paint all Haitians as criminals and as unauthorized immigrants.”

Whether or not Haitians deserved continued temporary protected status has everything to do with how Haiti is recovering from the 2010 earthquake. It has nothing to do with “crimes of any kind” Haitian visitors committed.

Nor should it. This is the difficult point for racists to understand. You could tell me that Haitian visitors are X times more likely to commit Y number of crimes. I would tell you that it doesn’t matter. You could tell me that Haitians kidnapped the damn Lindbergh baby, and I would tell you that it doesn’t matter. Finding one Haitian who committed one crime does not tell you anything about the NEXT Haitian here fleeing an earthquake. Finding 10 Haitians who committed 100 crimes doesn’t tell you anything about the eleventh Haitian. The entire logical structure of the racist — be they the actual president or merely the disgusting people willing to work for him or the deplorable people eager to vote for him — is wrong. The action of one group member cannot be used to impugn the entire group.

Those are the moral and logical reasons why evidence of Haitian criminal activity has nothing to do with TPS for Haitians.

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Legally, as usual, the Trump’s administration’s sloppy approach seems to have given his opponents legal grounds to fight the president. Because these documents make Trump’s stated reasons for revoking TPS for Haitians look a lot like pretext. People are already suing the Trump administration over its TPS decision. This report adds further evidence that the real reason Trump revoked TPS for Haitians was his own bigotry, and not a lawful assessment of the state of the country’s recovery from a natural disaster.

Once again, we’ll have to look to the courts to stop Trump’s assault on non-whites. Once again, we stand shocked as a majority of whites continue to let this man happen.

Trump Administration Sought Negative Information on Haitians [WNYC]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.

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