A federal appeals court said Wednesday that Homeland Security can move ahead with plans to end long-running deportation amnesties, known as Temporary Protected Status, for about 60,000 migrants from Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a brief order blocking a lower court decision that had found the decision to end TPS to be poisoned by racial animus.
The three judges — appointed by Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush and Trump — put Judge Trina Thompson’s ruling on hold to await other legal developments.
The decision has major implications for the migrants, most of whom have lived under TPS since the turn of the century and now face possible deportation.
“I can’t believe that the government wants to rip away my legal status, and separate me from my child. I have not been to Honduras since I was a baby,” said Jhony Silva, a Honduran immigrant here under TPS. “My work, my family, my whole life is here.”
Ahilan Arulanantham, lawyer for the migrants and co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, criticized the judges for not explaining their ruling.
“The court’s failure to provide any reasoning for its decision, including why this was an ‘emergency,’ falls far short of what due process requires, and our clients deserve,” he said.
But the court did give some hint of its thinking. It said it was suspending the proceedings in the 9th Circuit until after the same court issues a ruling in another TPS dispute involving hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.
The Supreme Court has explicitly allowed the Trump administration to move ahead with terminating TPS in that instance even as that case develops in lower courts.
TPS is supposed to be a short-term legal status granted to citizens of countries that suffer natural disasters, face unrest or are touched by war. It gives their home countries a chance to recover and the migrants the right to stay here in the interim.
But in practice it’s become a secondary immigration system, with the Hondurans and Nicaraguans now having lived here more than a quarter of a century, since Hurricane Mitch devastated Central America in 1998.
Nepal, meanwhile, was designated in 2015, after a massive earthquake.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said it was time to change things. She said the three nations have all recovered and it is safe to send their citizens back home.
But Judge Thompson, a Biden appointee to the court in California, said Ms. Noem and President Trump have shown so much animus toward migrants that their policy decisions are illegal.
She cited Ms. Noem’s comments about gang members and “poorly vetted migrants” as evidence. She also cited Mr. Trump’s comments about “poisoning the blood of our country” and his executive order describing the unprecedented border breakdown under President Biden as an “invasion.”
Judge Thompson also said the migrants in question are building the economy, pumping tax revenue into the government and making communities safer by their presence. In fact, she said, the communities would become less safe if they were pushed out.
“Termination of TPS would reduce public safety by reducing the amount of individuals, here TPS holders, who would otherwise report a crime or cooperate with law enforcement,” she said.
Her ruling earlier this month had extended the deportation amnesty through Nov. 18, and she’d said she could extend it further.
The appeals court judges said the Justice Department has signaled it plans to ask for Judge Thompson to be booted from the case, but for now it remains in her hands, as well as that of the 9th Circuit.
All told, more than 1 million migrants were living under TPS as of December, according to the Congressional Research Service. That included some 53,000 Hondurans, 7,500 Nepalese and 3,000 Nicaraguans.