Within hours of the Supreme Court stripping 330,000 Haitian immigrants of their temporary protective status, a program that protects a total of 1.3 million people from 17 countries, Service Employees International Union 1199 President Yvonne Armstrong had assembled at the union’s headquarters to denounce the high court’s ruling as racist and immoral. She was joined by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Attorney General Letitia James, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, as well as several other elected officials. Racist comments that President Donald Trump has made about immigrants surfaced in the Supreme Court’s deliberation but were dismissed by the majority as not being overtly racist.
“They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done. They poison — mental institutions and prisons all over the world. Not just in South America,” Trump told a New Hampshire rally in 2023. “Not just the three or four countries that we think about. But all over the world they’re coming into our country — from Africa, from Asia, all over the world. They’re pouring into our country.”
