SAN FRANCISCO, California — A federal judge ruled on Thursday against the Trump administration’s plans to end Temporary Protected Status for 60,000 people from Central America and Asia, including people from Nepal, Honduras and Nicaragua.
Temporary Protected Status is a protection that can be granted by the Homeland Security secretary to people of various nationalities who are in the United States, preventing them from being deported and allowing them to work.
The Trump administration has aggressively been seeking to remove the protection, thus making more people eligible for removal.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem can extend Temporary Protected Status to immigrants in the US if conditions in their homelands are deemed unsafe to return due to a natural disaster, political instability or other dangerous conditions.
Noem had ruled to end protections for tens of thousands of Hondurans and Nicaraguans after determining that conditions in their homelands no longer warranted them.
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The secretary said the two countries had made “significant progress” in recovering from 1998’s Hurricane Mitch, one of the deadliest Atlantic storms in history.
The designation for an estimated 7,000 from Nepal was scheduled to end on Aug. 5 while protections allowing 51,000 Hondurans and nearly 3,000 Nicaraguans who have been in the US for more than 25 years were set to expire on Sept. 8.
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US District Judge Trina Thompson in San Francisco did not set an expiration date but rather ruled to keep the protections in place while the case proceeds.
In a sharply written order, Thompson said the administration ended the migrant status protections without an “objective review of the country conditions” such as political violence in Honduras and the impact of recent hurricanes and storms in Nicaragua.
“The freedom to live fearlessly, the opportunity of liberty and the American dream. That is all Plaintiffs seek. Instead, they are told to atone for their race, leave because of their names and purify their blood,” Thompson said.
Lawyers for the National TPS Alliance argued that Noem’s decisions were predetermined by President Donald Trump’s campaign promises and motivated by racial animus.
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Thompson agreed, saying that statements Noem and Trump have made perpetuated the “discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population.” Honduras Deputy Foreign Minister Antonio García told the Associated Press (AP), “The judge recognized the need of the [TPS holders] to be able to work in peace, tranquility and legally.” He recalled that during the first Trump administration, there was a similar legal challenge, and the fight took five years in the courts.
“Today’s news is hopeful and positive, and gives us time and oxygen, hopefully it will be a long road, and the judge will have the final word and not President Trump,” he said.
