Prez wins court fight to deport Salvadoran immigs

President Trump won a legal round Monday in his fight to deport hundreds of thousands of immigrants from El Salvador and other countries who came to the U.S. after disasters in their homelands.

A divided three-judge panel of the federal 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that Trump was within his rights to revoke the so-called Temporary Protected Status from Salvadoran immigrants.

Assuming the ruling withstands possible scrutiny from the Supreme Court, it means Trump could deport more than 300,000 immigrants, many of whom have been living and working in the U.S. for years.

The ruling is also expected to affect the status of people from Honduras, Nicaragua, Sudan and Nepal, whose separate lawsuit is expected to be governed by the outcome of the Salvadoran case.

Temporary Protected Status beneficiaries from six countries in all have been granted legal authorization to live and work in the U.S. through Jan. 4.

The ruling could mean that those immigrants must find another way to remain in the United States legally or leave the country after a wind-down period of six months or a year, in the case of El Salvador.

The timing means that the fate of the immigrants would likely be determined by the results of the upcoming presidential election, since Democrat Joe Biden would have time to reverse the policy if he beats Trump in November.

Haitian immigrants who obtained Temporary Protected Status after a massive 2010 earthquake wreaked havoc on the Caribbean nation filed a separate case that is being heard by Manhattan’s 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.