Judge lets protected status for immigrants continue

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.

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 January remark about “people from shithole countries” and his June 2017 comments stating that 15,000 recent immigrants from Haiti “all have AIDS.”

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.

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

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.

“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 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.”

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.

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 Homeland Security’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.

Instead, it appeared 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 Trump’s “America First” immigration agenda, the judge said.