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Dozens of Haitian municipal workers were fired by the city following the US Supreme Court decision allowing the Trump administration to pull their “temporary protected status” – and Mayor Zohran Mamdani admitted Monday there’s nothing he can do about it.
City Hall officials confirmed terminating the workers’ employment on July 24, when their TPS status expired, saying that at least dozens were affected but declining to provide a total number.
“When it comes to the decision the city made, it was one that we were forced to make by federal law,” Mamdani said at an unrelated press conference in Lower Manhattan.
“Only President Trump has the ability to restore TPS or to grant deferred enforcement departure to affected TPS holders,” he said.
Under the TPS program, more than 350,000 people from Haiti and Syria were allowed to live and work in the US while their home countries faced humanitarian crises. The work permits of Syrian immigrants under TPS are set to expire July 17.
The Supreme Court in June ruled that the statute behind TPS did not allow for judicial review, meaning lower courts couldn’t halt President Trump’s move to yank the deportation protections.
A federal judge last week acknowledged that under the SCOTUS decision, a court order that had blocked the feds from ending TPS for hundreds of thousands of Haitians was no longer in effect.
Mamdani admitted he was effectively powerless in the face of the federal ruling, and that the ball was now in Trump’s court.
Mamdani revealed he has been urging the president directly to reinstate the measures that protected Haitian nationals from deportation.
“I made clear to the president, as I’ve made clear to anyone across the city, the vital importance of TPS,” Mamdani said – dodging a reporter who questioned why the mayor didn’t hold a press conference calling out the feds for moving to end the program.
Hizzoner notably also declined to call attention to the matter on his social media channels, which have over 6 million followers across Instagram and X.
Instead, City Hall quietly circulated an email statement to reporters Friday evening announcing the firings – after the mayor’s conversation with the president, Mamdani confirmed Monday.
“When we are talking about the conditions of Haiti today, they are very similar to conditions that led to the authorization of TPS — they’re talking about a place the United States government is recommending to Americans to not visit,” Mamdani said.
City Hall officials had claimed the mayoral admin would do “everything in its power” to support TPS recipients – including free legal consultations and assistance from city agency staff.
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