Federal Judge Blocks Trump From Removing Immigrants From 4 Countries

A federal court in California has blocked the Trump administration from terminating the Temporary Protected Status program that allows immigrants from four countries to live and work in the United States.

The ruling issued late Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen Wednesday affects more than 300,000 immigrants enrolled in TPS from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Sudan.

TPS was created by Congress in 1990 to allow people from countries suffering civil conflict or natural disasters to remain in the U.S. temporarily.

Wednesday's ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) alleging the Trump administration violated constitutional protections of due process and equal protection when it announced it would terminate the program, beginning with immigrants from Sudan next month.

Judge Chen's injunction comes less than two weeks after he heard oral arguments in San Francisco.

The ACLU lawsuit suit alleges that the effort to end TPS "was motivated by intentional race- and national-origin-based animus against individuals from what President Trump has referred to as "shithole countries."

In his ruling, Judge Chen said ending TPS would cause "irreparable harm and great hardship" for immigrants, many of whom have lived in the U.S. for at least a decade, held down jobs, and have raised families. He also said there is evidence that President Trump tried to end the program because he is motivated by "an animus against non-white, non-European aliens."

The lawsuit also alleges that the eliminating TPS would dramatically alter the lives of more than 270,000 U.S. citizen children who have at least one parent with TPS. Such children would be forced to make a choice between the care and support of their parents and the rights and benefits of U.S citizenship.

Judge Chen also said that the government also failed to show how it would be harmed by continuing the TPS program.

In a statement, Justice Department spokesman Devin O'Malley said:</s>A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration's plan to end Temporary Protected Status for people from four countries. The decision affects some 300,000 immigrants.</s>A federal court in California has blocked the Trump administration from terminating the Temporary Protected Status program that allows immigrants from four countries to live and work in the United States.

The ruling issued late Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen Wednesday affects more than 300,000 immigrants enrolled in TPS from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Sudan.

TPS was created by Congress in 1990 to allow people from countries suffering civil conflict or natural disasters to live and work in the U.S. temporarily.

Wednesday's ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) alleging the Trump administration violated constitutional protections of due process and equal protection when it announced it would terminate the program, beginning with immigrants from Sudan next month.

Judge Chen's injunction comes less than two weeks after he heard oral arguments in San Francisco.

The ACLU lawsuit suit alleges that the effort to end TPS "was motivated by intentional race- and national-origin-based animus against individuals from what President Trump has referred to as "shithole countries."

In his ruling, Judge Chen said ending TPS would cause "irreparable harm and great hardship" for immigrants, many of whom have lived in the U.S. for at least a decade, held down jobs, and have raised families. He also said there is evidence that President Trump tried to end the program because he is motivated by "an animus against non-white, non-European aliens."

The lawsuit also alleges that the eliminating TPS would dramatically alter the lives of more than 270,000 U.S. citizen children who have at least one parent with TPS. Such children would be forced to make a choice between the care and support of their parents and the rights and benefits of U.S citizenship.

Judge Chen also said that the government also failed to show how it would be harmed by continuing the TPS program.

"The Court's decision usurps the role of the executive branch in our constitutional order. The Court contends that the duly elected President of the United States cannot be involved in matters deciding the safety and security of our nation's citizens or in the enforcement of our immigration laws. The Justice Department completely rejects the notion that the White House or the Department of Homeland Security did anything improper. We will continue to fight for the integrity of our immigration laws and our national security."</s>US judge blocks Trump administration from ending legal status for some immigrants from 4 countries

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — US judge blocks Trump administration from ending legal status for some immigrants from 4 countries.</s>BOSTON (AP) - Immigrants and their advocates are embracing a court ruling that has temporarily allowed hundreds of thousands of people to keep living and working in the United States.

Immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan on Thursday cheered the decision by a federal judge in San Francisco to block the Trump administration from ending their temporary protected status.

The judge ruled late Wednesday after finding evidence that President Donald Trump "harbors an animus against non-white, non-European aliens."

The status is granted to citizens of countries ravaged by natural disasters or war and lets them live and work in the U.S. until the situation improves back home.

About 300,000 immigrants have the status. The Trump administration had moved to end the program for the four countries, leading immigrants to sue.

FILE - In this Monday, March 12, 2018, file photo, supporters of temporary protected status immigrants hold signs and cheer at a rally before a news conference announcing a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its decision to end a program that lets immigrants live and work legally in the United States outside of a federal courthouse in San Francisco. A judge on Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2018, blocked the Trump administration from ending protections that let immigrants from four countries live and work legally in the United States, saying the move would cause "irreparable harm and great hardship." (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)</s>BOSTON (AP) — When Sudanese immigrant Hiwaida Elarabi learned the U.S. government was ending the temporary protected status that allowed her to live and work in the country legally for two decades, she sold off the restaurant that had been her life’s dream.

Terrified to return to Sudan and unable to fathom a life without proper legal documents, the 55-year-old was one of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who got temporary relief after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from moving ahead with its plans.

“This is a good day,” Elarabi said Thursday. She now works for a university in Massachusetts after obtaining her master’s degree in bioinformatics. “I was stressed I might also lose my position at the university as well as my legal status in this country.”

Elarabi is one of some 300,000 immigrants from Sudan, El Salvador, Haiti and Nicaragua who for now will keep their temporary protected status, known as TPS, under the ruling. It’s granted to citizens of countries ravaged by natural disasters or war and lets them live and work in the U.S. until the situation improves back home.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco granted a request late Wednesday to block the administration’s plans. He found there is evidence that “President Trump harbors an animus against non-white, non-European aliens which influenced his … decision to end the TPS designation.”

The ruling cited Trump’s 2015 campaign speech in which he characterized Mexican immigrants as drug dealers and rapists, his call to bar Muslims from entering the United States and his vulgar reference to African countries during a meeting about immigration at the White House in January.

It is the latest in a series of court decisions that have slowed the Trump administration’s effort to crack down on immigration. Federal courts also pushed back against the administration’s travel ban on several mostly Muslim countries and the separation of immigrant parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Justice Department spokesman Devin O’Malley said the ruling “usurps the role of the executive branch.”

“The Justice Department completely rejects the notion that the White House or the Department of Homeland Security did anything improper,” he said in a statement.

It wasn’t immediately clear what the process would be to extend immigrants’ temporary status. The issue is expected to be addressed in court later this month.

El Salvador has the largest number of immigrants with temporary status. In January, the Trump administration said it would end the program for the country in September 2019 because progress had been made to recover from a devastating 2001 earthquake.

In March, immigrant advocates sued on behalf of those with the status from El Salvador and from the three other countries who were also told their programs were ending.

Elarabi, who is one of the plaintiffs, said she holds out hope of owning a restaurant again someday after selling hers at a loss because of uncertainty about her status.

Salvadoran paralegal Jose Palma has lived in the Boston area for two decades and has four U.S.-born children ranging from 17 years old to 2 months. If his temporary status ends, the 42-year-old said he would probably return to El Salvador with his three youngest children, leaving his eldest in the U.S. to attend college.

For now, he’s focused on pushing U.S. lawmakers to pass a law allowing immigrants with temporary status to become legal permanent residents. He said the ruling fuels him and others to keep fighting.

“It’s a light in the dark tunnel we’re walking in now,” he said.

Marleine Bastien, executive director of Family Action Network Movement, told reporters in Miami that she expects the federal government to appeal the ruling. She also noted that the decision, while “of great importance,” is only temporary.

Rony Ponthieux, a Haitian immigrant who works as a hospital nurse, said he believes he and others like him deserve to stay in the country because they work hard, pay taxes and contribute to communities just like permanent residents and Americans.

He said he had not started making plans to leave the United States even though his temporary status had been set to expire in July 2019.

“I knew something was going to happen,” Ponthieux said. “I believed in God.”

Taxin reported from Santa Ana, California, and Kay reported from Miami.</s>A federal judge in California temporarily blocked the Trump administration's plans to terminate the legal status of more than 300,000 immigrants who fled violence and disaster in Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

In a decision late Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco found substantial evidence that the administration lacked "any explanation or justification" to end the "temporary protected status" designations for immigrants from those countries.

At the same time, he said there were "serious questions as to whether a discriminatory purpose was a motivating factor" in the administration's decision, which would violate the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection under the law.

He cited statements by President Donald Trump denigrating Mexicans, Muslims, Haitians and Africans, including his Jan. 11 remark about "people from shithole countries."

It is one of numerous cases in which such racial or ethnic comments by the president have been cited by judges to block administration immigration policies.

The judge did not rule on the merits of the case, but rather issued a preliminary injunction so the merits could be considered. The potential harm to the immigrants - return to their countries of origin after spending years in the United States - outweighed any harm to the government, he said.

"Absent injunctive relief, TPS beneficiaries and their children indisputably will suffer irreparable harm and great hardship," Chen wrote. "TPS beneficiaries who have lived, worked, and raised families in the United States (many for more than a decade), will be subject to removal. Many have U.S.-born children; those may be faced with the Hobson's choice of bringing their children with them (and tearing them away from the only country and community they have known) or splitting their families apart."

Justice Department spokesman Devin O'Malley in a statement shortly after the decision said the administration would "continue to fight for the integrity of our immigration laws and our national security." He said Chen's decision "usurps the role of the executive branch in our constitutional order," and rejected "the notion that the White House or the Department of Homeland Security did anything improper."

The ACLU of Northern and Southern California, National Day Laborer Organizing Network and private law firm Sidley Austin filed the lawsuit in March on behalf of TPS beneficiaries who would face deportation as a result of the Trump administration's actions.

In a series of announcements in the fall of 2017 and early 2018, DHS said it planned to terminate the temporary protected status of the immigrants from Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua and El Salvador, claiming the life-threatening conditions that caused the immigrants to flee no longer existed.

But Chen found that the plaintiffs presented a "substantial record" showing that DHS's decision to changed various criteria affecting the TPS program "without any explanation or justification," in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

First published by The Washington Post.</s>A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to temporarily halt its plan to end a special federal immigration program that has allowed hundreds of thousands of immigrants to legally live and work in the U.S. for decades.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen ruled that the administration may have side-stepped federal rule-making guidelines, imposed undue political pressure on staffers, and violated the Equal Protection Clause by basing its decision "on animus against non-white, non-European immigrants."

The ruling is the latest blow against President Donald Trump's efforts to overhaul the nation's immigration laws, following court orders limiting his travel ban targeting majority Muslim countries, his attempt to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and his policy of separating migrant families along the southwest border.

The preliminary injunction ordered by Chen prevents the deportation of an estimated 300,000 immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan, who were facing a series of deadlines starting in November to depart the country or risk becoming undocumented immigrants. These immigrants had been granted permission to be in the U.S. under the Temporary Protected Status program, better known as TPS. The humanitarian program was created in 1990 to help immigrants from countries that suffered war or major natural disasters.

The Department of Homeland Security, which manages TPS, has argued that the program has been wrongly extended for years, and that conditions in those four countries are now suitable for thousands of their residents to return home.

But the northern California federal judge disagreed with the administration and sided — at least for now — with the plaintiffs. He set a hearing for Oct. 26.

In reaching his decision, Chen ruled that there is no immediate harm to the federal government if its decision to end TPS is temporarily halted. But he wrote that there would be enduring, longstanding harm to TPS holders, and the communities in which they live, if they’re forced to leave the country.

Chen cited a brief filed by 17 states that estimated they would lose $132 billion in gross domestic product, $5.2 billion in Social Security and Medicare contributions, and $733 million in employer turnover costs if TPS recipients are sent home.

As for the TPS holders themselves, Chen focused on the thousands of U.S.-born children they've had since living in the U.S.

TPS holders are “faced with a Hobson’s choice of bringing their children with them (and tearing them away from the only country and community they have known) or splitting their families apart,” the judge wrote.

Chen focused much of his 43-page decision on the way that the Trump administration reached its decision. He wrote that former Homeland Security Acting Secretary Elaine Duke did not appear to have reached her decision to end TPS based on the facts before her, but was "largely carrying out or conforming with a predetermined presidential agenda to end TPS."

Chen said that agenda may have been tainted by racial bias. The judge listed off multiple comments and actions by Trump, during his presidential campaign and after moving into the White House, as indications that the TPS termination had a racial component behind it.
• Trump's comments during his June 2015 speech announcing his candidacy when he characterized Mexicans as drug dealers, criminals and rapists.
• His December 2015 call for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."
• A report in the Washington Post in January 2018 that President Trump referred to El Salvador, Haiti and African nations as "shithole countries."
• A February 2018 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference where Trump "used MS-13...to disparage immigrants, indicating that they are criminals and comparing them to snakes."

“The issues are at least serious enough to preserve the status quo,” he wrote.

The suit against DHS was filed last March by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and other immigrant advocates.

“Despite the administration’s efforts to twist the existing TPS statute, this preliminary injunction preserves its long-existing intent and avoids the deportation of more than three hundred thousand individuals to countries unfit to accommodate them and, equally importantly, prevents the separation of hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizen children from their parents,” the plaintiffs said in a statement to USA Today.

“Judge Chen’s decision reaffirms the importance of our judicial system and the checks and balances in place to hold our government accountable,” they said.</s>In a decision late Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen in San Francisco found substantial evidence that the administration lacked “any explanation or justification” to end the “temporary protected status” designations for immigrants from those countries.

A federal judge in California temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plans to terminate the legal status of about 300,000 immigrants who fled violence and disaster in Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

It is one of numerous cases in which such racial or ethnic comments or tweets by the president have been cited by judges to block administration policies, including on immigration and transgender people serving in the military.

He cited statements by U.S. President Donald Trump denigrating Mexicans, Muslims, Haitians and Africans, including his January remark about “people from shithole countries” and his June 2017 comments stating that 15,000 recent immigrants from Haiti “all have AIDS.”

At the same time, he said there were “serious questions as to whether a discriminatory purpose was a motivating factor” in the administration’s decision, which would violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.

The ACLU of Northern and Southern California, National Day Laborer Organizing Network and private law firm Sidley Austin filed the lawsuit in March on behalf of TPS beneficiaries who could face deportation as a result of the Trump administration’s actions.

Justice Department spokesperson Devin O’Malley said in a statement shortly after the decision that the administration would “continue to fight for the integrity of our immigration laws and our national security.” He said Chen’s decision “usurps the role of the executive branch in our constitutional order,” and rejected “the notion that the White House or the Department of Homeland Security did anything improper.”

“Absent injunctive relief, TPS beneficiaries and their children indisputably will suffer irreparable harm and great hardship,” Chen wrote. “TPS beneficiaries who have lived, worked, and raised families in the United States (many for more than a decade), will be subject to removal. Many have U.S.-born children; those may be faced with the Hobson’s choice of bringing their children with them (and tearing them away from the only country and community they have known) or splitting their families apart.”

The judge did not rule on the merits of the case, but rather issued a preliminary injunction so the merits could be considered. The potential harm to the immigrants — returning to their countries of origin after spending years in the United States — outweighed any harm to the government, he said.

In this case, Ramos v. Nielsen, and others, the judges have also cited deeply flawed decision-making by the administration and breaches of laws and regulations meant to prevent “arbitrary” acts by government.

But Chen found that the plaintiffs presented a “substantial record” showing that DHS’s decision to change various criteria affecting the TPS program were “without any explanation or justification,” in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires agencies to make orderly decisions based on reasoned judgment, evidence and in conformity with the laws and the Constitution.

In a series of announcements in the fall of 2017 and early 2018, DHS said it planned to terminate the temporary protected status of the immigrants from Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua and El Salvador, claiming the life-threatening conditions that caused the immigrants to flee no longer existed.

Instead, it appeared senior administration officials ignored credible evidence that it would not be safe to send thousands of people back to those countries so that the administration could carry out President Donald Trump’s “America First” immigration agenda, the judge said. Rather than making decisions based on what the evidence showed, Chen found that the administration appeared to make its decisions based on a “preordained result desired by the White House.”

As former Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke wrote in one email that was cited: “The TPS program must end for these countries soon. . . . This conclusion is the result of an America first view of the TPS decision.”

The evidence Chen cited to support the injunction included testimony and dozens of internal emails between administration officials, exposing a convoluted and contentious decision-making process about whether to end TPS for Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua and El Salvador, as The Washington Post’s Nick Miroff previously reported. Some of the correspondence showed current government employees expressing alarm or confusion about how the Trump administration could justify terminating TPS for those countries.

As current and former administration officials testified, in the past, the government traditionally renewed temporary protected status for countries if conditions there were still found to be dangerous. For example, El Salvador experienced devastating earthquakes in 2001, but the government has repeatedly renewed temporary protected status because conditions are in general still not safe.

But in “a strong break with past practice,” Duke said in an email to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, the Trump administration decided to only consider whether the original conditions still existed, such as devastation resulting specifically from the 2001 El Salvador earthquakes.

The plaintiffs argued that this change was based not on sound policy but on racial animus. Chen found that there was both direct and circumstantial evidence of race being a motivating factor.

“I think everyone already knows the Trump administration has really callous policies when it comes to deportation,” said Jessica Karp Bansal, co-legal director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. “But this case is not only about deportation. This is about the Trump administration taking away legal status from people who held it for decades. And that is because of racial animus toward those people.”

To justify its decisions to terminate TPS in the four countries at issue, the administration compiled “decision memos.” But if the evidence contained in the memos suggested it would be wise to extend temporary protected status for the countries, officials tried to twist the evidence to steer toward termination, emails show.

One “particularly telling” piece of correspondence, to quote the judge, was between Kathy Nuebel Kovarik, the chief of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service’s Office of Policy and Strategy, and a subordinate.

Kovarik said there was a “problem” with the memos because they “read as though we’d recommend an extension b/c we talk so much about how bad it is, but there’s not enough in there about positive steps that have been taken since it’s designation.”

An employee responded: “We can ... try to get more, and/or comb through the country conditions we have again looking for positive gems, but the conditions are what they are.” The decision in all four cases was still termination.

The case of Sudan’s TPS termination, as described by Judge Chen, was illustrative.

In its first decision memo for Sudan on Aug. 17, 2017, USCIS concluded that “it remains unsafe for individuals to return to Sudan” and that the armed conflict continued to support extending Sudan’s temporary protected status.

Just one week later, USCIS issued a second memo that reiterated all of the same evidence about Sudan’s conflict — but this time instead it recommended termination.

L. Francis Cissna, who is now the USCIS director, sent an email the next day noting that the memo “seems a bit confused.”

“The memo reads like one person who strongly supports extending TPS for Sudan wrote everything up to the recommendation section, and then someone who opposes extension snuck up behind the first guy, clubbed him over the head, pushed his senseless body out of the way, and finished the memo,” Cissna wrote. “Am I missing something?”

Despite concerns from the State Department, Sudan’s TPS was terminated.

Hiwaida Elarabi, one of the main plaintiffs in the case and a TPS holder from Sudan, remembered the day she heard the news: She woke up listening to it, she told The Washington Post. Her alarm clock is set to AM radio.

“It was really ... I can’t even describe it. It was disturbing,” said Elarabi, who has lived and worked in the Boston area now for 21 years under TPS. “It was depressing. And I really just couldn’t grapple with the situation, even comprehend it at that time.”

She had spent every day since then on “autopilot,” she said, unwilling to think about what it would be like to have to leave the United States and return to the country she fled fearing her life.

When her attorney called Wednesday evening to share the news of Chen’s ruling, she said, she was filled with relief.

“We are your neighbours, your teachers, physicians, scientists, business owners. We are in all aspects of life here in the U.S.,” she said, “and we have been in society for so long. It is home for us here. We don’t know another home than here.”</s>SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — US judge blocks Trump administration from ending legal status for some immigrants from 4 countries.
A federal court in California blocks the Trump administration from terminating the Temporary Protected Status program that allows immigrants from four countries to live and work in the United States.