SAN FRANCISCO — (AP) — A federal judge ruled on Thursday against the Trump administration's plans and extended 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 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. It's part of a wider effort by the administration to carry out mass deportations of immigrants.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem can extend Temporary Protected Status to immigrants in the U.S. 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.
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 Aug. 5 while protections allowing 51,000 Hondurans and nearly 3,000 Nicaraguans who have been in the U.S. for more than 25 years were set to expire Sept. 8.
U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson in San Francisco did not set an expiration date but rather ruled to keep the protections in place while the case proceeds. The next hearing is Nov. 18.
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.
If the protections were not extended, immigrants could suffer from loss of employment, health insurance, be separated from their families, and risk being deported to other countries where they have no ties, she wrote, adding that the termination of Temporary Protection Status for people from Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua would result in a $1.4 billion loss to the economy.
“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.
Thompson agreed, saying that statements Noem and Trump have made perpetuated the "discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population.”
“Color is neither a poison nor a crime,” she wrote.
The advocacy group that filed the lawsuit said designees usually have a year to leave the country, but in this case, they got far less.
“They gave them two months to leave the country. It’s awful,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney for plaintiffs at a hearing Tuesday.
Honduras Deputy Foreign Minister Antonio García told The Associated Press, “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. He hoped for a similar outcome this time that would allow the Hondurans to remain in the U.S.
“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.
Meanwhile in Nicaragua, hundreds of thousands have fled into exile as the government shuttered thousands of nongovernmental organizations and imprisoned political opponents. Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega and his wife and co-President Rosario Murillo have consolidated complete control in Nicaragua since Ortega returned to power two decades ago.
In February, a panel of U.N. experts warned the Nicaraguan government had dismantled the last remaining checks and balances and was “systematically executing a strategy to cement total control of the country through severe human rights violations.”
The broad effort by the Republican administration 's crackdown on immigration has been going after people who are in the country illegally but also by removing protections that have allowed people to live and work in the U.S. on a temporary basis.
The Trump administration has already terminated protections for about 350,000 Venezuelans, 500,000 Haitians, more than 160,000 Ukrainians and thousands of people from Afghanistan and Cameroon. Some have pending lawsuits at federal courts.
The government argued that Noem has clear authority over the program and that her decisions reflect the administration’s objectives in the areas of immigration and foreign policy.
“It is not meant to be permanent,” Justice Department attorney William Weiland said.
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Ding reported from Los Angeles. Marlon González contributed from Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
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