A federal court has ruled that the Trump administration cannot deport hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants who have temporary legal status. The judge criticized the government’s attempt to deport the immigrants as “unlawful” and grounded in flawed reasoning.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to end the “temporary protected status” provided by the Biden administration was found to be “preordained without any [meaningful] analysis and review,” according to U.S. District Judge Edward Chen.
The case has been bouncing around the federal courts for months, and this decision is only the most recent development in that process. While the lower courts continued to hear the issue, the Supreme Court upheld one of Noem’s prior rulings on the matter. The court’s emergency ruling removed a hurdle that Chen had previously placed on the TPS revocations.
Despite the Supreme Court’s earlier order, Obama appointee Chen of San Francisco maintained that his latest rule was not in contradiction with it as the matter was in its preliminary stage and the justices’ decision was limited to a temporary injunction he had given. The challengers argued that Noem’s policy change violated the federal statute that regulates agency decisionmaking, but he noted that the high court did not stop him from thoroughly evaluating the case’s merits and giving a final ruling.
The order was made effective immediately by Chen, who acknowledged the inevitable appeal from the Trump administration and cited the “significant rights of the Venezuelan and Haitian TPS holders who have lost or will lose status in the absence of relief.”
U.S. immigration law gives temporary protected status (TPS) to nationals of countries experiencing humanitarian emergencies, allowing them to stay and work lawfully in the US.
A representative from the Department of Homeland Security was confident that the decision would be reversed.
“The TPS program has been abused, exploited, and politicized as a de facto amnesty program for decades,” explained the official. “Secretary Noem will exhaust all Departmental legal avenues to restore order and put the safety of Americans first, even though this order postpones justice.” The American people’s desire for a secure nation cannot be thwarted by activist judges who are not elected.
Even though Trump officials have said that Biden let a lot of immigrants in without checking their backgrounds, some of the people who are eligible for TPS came during Trump’s first term and received similar protection from him before he left office.
Legal experts are debating whether or not certain judges are willfully disregarding or defying Supreme Court decisions, which brings us to the verdict from Chen.
In a dissenting opinion last month, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch condemned such disobedience. However, a number of judges from lower courts have stated that there is a great deal of ambiguity regarding the application of the high court’s usually brief verdicts in emergency situations.
Without explaining the justices’ reasoning, the May order that effectively nullified Chen’s earlier ruling and allowed the administration to proceed with winding down TPS for Venezuelans implied that individuals with work permits or similar paperwork marked as valid until next month might have better claims. The sole justice to express disagreement with that decision was Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Following a string of decisions by lower courts that have also thwarted Trump’s attempt to swiftly deport populations that were granted protections by the Biden administration, Chen’s verdict is the most recent blow to his mass deportation strategy. The measures enacted by the Trump administration have been allowed to continue in some cases due to the intervention of the Supreme Court. Still, more extensive lawsuits involving each of them are continuing.