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Officials Distorted Facts to Justify Deporting Haitians, Internal Emails Show

Emails revealed in a California lawsuit and now submitted to the Supreme Court show that an administration researcher privately disputed claims about Haitians.

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Demonstrators protested in January for an extension of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants.

Credit...

Lynne Sladky/Associated Press

By

Mattathias Schwartz

Reporting on the federal judiciary

April 29, 2026,

10:02 a.m. ET

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As the Trump administration prepared to remove protections from deportation for more than 350,000 Haitians living in the United States, a government researcher privately complained that she was being ordered to manipulate evidence to support the move, internal emails show.

Ashley Holland, who worked at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, wrote in a September 2025 email that she had received a “command” to include a claim that the humanitarian program, known as Temporary Protected Status, had caused more Haitians to migrate to the United States, despite a lack of “any empirical evidence.”

The next month, the researcher wrote that her supervisor removed data from a report she was preparing that showed no Haitians were flagged in government databases as known or suspected terrorists, because it did not support the administration’s argument.

The T.P.S. program allows the homeland security secretary authority to grant temporary refuge to citizens of countries affected by armed conflict, natural disaster or other catastrophes, if they are already in the United States. The law also allows the secretary to revoke the protections, provided the administration consults “with appropriate agencies” and prepares a report, evaluating that conditions have changed in a country such that the protections are no longer needed.

As part of compiling that report, the emails show that Ms. Holland warned that manipulating the data “is not our job and will open us — and the Haiti decision — up to litigation.”

Such litigation is now before the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, the court will hear arguments about whether Kristi Noem, then the leader of the Homeland Security Department, violated the law when she announced last November that Haitian immigrants would lose protections. The court will also consider the legality of the administration’s attempt to revoke T.P.S. for roughly 6,000 Syrians in the United States.

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