A Judge Accused Noem of Racism. It’s Hard to Defend Her

It’s not every day that a federal judge accuses a cabinet secretary of racism. But that’s a fair reading of this week’s scathing opinion by Judge Ana C. Reyes, which orders a stay of the Trump administration’s decision to end the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for some 350,000 Haitian refugees currently living in the US.

The villain of the 83-page opinion is Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. And Judge Reyes pulls no punches: “Plaintiffs charge that Secretary Noem preordained her termination decision and did so because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants. This seems substantially likely.”