Judge Extends Protections for 60,000 Central Americans and Nepalis

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal judge in California extended on Thursday temporary protected status for 60,000 people from Central America and Asia, including people from Nepal, Honduras and Nicaragua.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem determined that conditions in their home country no longer warranted protections.

Temporary Protected Status designations for an estimated 7,000 from Nepal was scheduled to end Aug. 5. And protections allowing 51,000 Hondurans and nearly 3,000 Nicaraguans to reside and work lawfully in the U.S. for more than 25 years were set to expire Sept. 8. The secretary said both Honduras and Nicaragua had made “significant progress” in recovering from 1998’s Hurricane Mitch.

Temporary Protected Status is a temporary protection that can be granted by the Homeland Security secretary to people of various nationalities who are in the United States, which prevents them from being deported and allows them to work. The Trump administration has aggressively been seeking to remove the protection, thus making more people eligible for removal.

The terminations are part of a broad effort by the Republican administration to deport immigrants en masse, by going after people who are in the country illegally but also by removing protections that have allowed people to live and work in the U.S. on a temporary basis.

Noem can grant Temporary Protected Status to people of various countries already in the U.S. if conditions in the home country prevent a safe return, such as natural disaster or political instability.

The Trump administration has already terminated TPS for about 350,000 Venezuelans, 500,000 Haitians, more than 160,000 Ukrainians and thousands of people from Afghanistan, Nepal and Cameroon. Some have pending lawsuits at federal courts.

Lawyers for the National TPS Alliance argue that Noem’s decisions were not based on objective analysis of conditions at home countries, but predetermined by President Donald Trump’s campaign promises and motivated by racial animus. They say designees usually have a year to leave the country, but in this case, they got far less.

“They gave them two months to leave the country. It’s awful,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney for plaintiffs at a hearing Tuesday.

The government argues that Noem has clear and unreviewable authority over the TPS program and that her termination decisions reflect the administration’s objectives in the areas of immigration and foreign policy.

Justice Department attorney William Weiland said it is not a pretext to have a different view of a program that provides temporary safe harbor.

“It is not meant to be permanent,” he said Tuesday.