Trump officials snooped for 'negative information' about Haitian TPS recipients, emails show
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As far back as a year ago, the Associated Press reported that Trump administration officials were secretly snooping into the backgrounds of Haitian Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients “for evidence of crimes” in order to justify ending their proTrump officials snooped for 'negative information' about Haitian TPS recipients, emails show
As far back as a year ago, the Associated Press reported that Trump administration officials were secretly snooping into the backgrounds of Haitian Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients “for evidence of crimes” in order to justify ending their protections, a charge that was denied by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). But, according to emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and now made public by the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, that’s exactly what they were up to: The latest emails show that, in April 2017, Kathy Nuebel Kovarik, the chief of policy and strategy at [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services], asked her staff to provide her with data showing how many Haitian TPS holders were on public assistance, how many had committed crimes, and how much money they were sending back to Haiti. When USCIS staff couldn’t get the data Nuebel Kovarik wanted, she asked if they could “figure out [how] to conduct a random sampling of files that we could then use to generalize the entire community.” Kovarik, according to WNYC, “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.” Permissions that were then terminated by the administration the following November, claiming that conditions in Haiti had improved, when clearly they were digging for any reason to justify their deportation. «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 National Immigration Project’s Sejal Zota. «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.» Read more