With the ruling of an appeals court, the United States government will be able to end TPS for migrants from Nepal, Honduras and Nicaragua.
A federal appeals court on Monday allowed President Donald Trump to move forward with ending deportation protections for more than 60,000 migrants from Nepal, Honduras and Nicaragua, a victory for his administration’s push to scale back a program for migrants fleeing the crisis in their countries.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has moved to end the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program for hundreds of thousands of migrants fleeing instability and war in their home countries.
In lawsuits challenging these policies, numerous district court judges have ruled against the Trump administration, finding that the ending of deportation protections was predetermined and driven by the intent to end TPS. But in a similar case last year, the Supreme Court allowed deportation protections to expire. for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants.
Judge Trina Thompson, of the Northern District of California, who had overseen the court case of the Nepalese, Honduran and Nicaraguan migrants, he wrote in a stern order last year that Noem had perpetuated xenophobic stereotypes and racist conspiracy theories in their efforts to suspend their TPS protections.
But a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stayed Judge Thompson’s sentence at the request of the Trump administration, pointing to the Supreme Court’s rulings in the Venezuelan case.
The Ninth Circuit panel wrote in an unsigned ruling that there was significant evidence supporting the Trump administration’s position, and argued that Noem’s decision to end the programs may not be subject to judicial review, and that “the government is likely to be able to demonstrate that the administrative record adequately supports the secretary’s actions.”
“We do not write on a blank slate,” the judges wrote. The Supreme Court orders, which were unsigned, “contained no reasoning and therefore do not inform our analysis of the legal issues in this case,” the justices wrote, but “we have been advised that the court’s stay orders should inform” the rulings in their own cases.
Some 50,000 Hondurans, 7,000 Nepalese and 3,000 Nicaraguans are covered by Temporary Protected Status, according to the Congressional Research Service. This decades-old program allows people from countries facing armed conflict, natural disasters and other catastrophes to live and work temporarily in the United States. Its protection for migrants from some countries has been renewed for years as unrest in their nations continues.
The program has been a prominent target of the Trump administration’s deportation efforts. In all, the government has moved to eliminate the program for more than a million people from eight countries, arguing that the programs were originally intended to provide temporary relief and have been expanded beyond their original scope.
With information from:
- Chris Cameron / Times reporter in Washington, where he focuses on breaking news and the Trump administration.
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