By Janie Har
San Francisco (AP) – A Federal Court of Appeal of San Francisco left an order of a lower court on Friday blocking the Trump administration to end temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of venezuelans.
The panel of three judges of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals of the United States rejected the request for suspension of the Ministry of Homeland Security for an emergency suspension during their appeal. The court wrote that the government has not “demonstrated that it would suffer irreparable damage in the absence of a stay”.
US District Judge Edward Chen in March concluded that Kristi Noem secretary illegally reversed the protections granted by the Biden administration which allow around 350,000 venezuelans to live and work in the United States, these temporary protections were to expire earlier this month.
Noem had also announced the end of the temporary protected status for around 250,000 Venezuelans in September and for 500,000 Haitians whose TPS protections should expire in August.
MJ lawyers for the government argue that the congress has given the secretary a clear and wide authority on the TPS program and that decisions are not subject to a legal examination.
“This appeal implies an extraordinary intrusion of a district court in the administration of the secretary of TPS status,” they wrote.
Congress created TP, as the law is known in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries with natural disasters or civil conflicts. The program grants people the authorization to live and work in the United States increasing up to 18 months if the Secretary of Internal Security judges the conditions in their country of origin is not safe.
By blocking the administration, Chen said hundreds of thousands of people and their families and livelihoods were in danger of severe disruption, as well as the health of communities across the country and billions of dollars in economic activity generated by Venezuelan workers.
He declared that the government had not identified “real prejudice in the continuous TPS for the Venezuelan beneficiaries” and that the applicants will probably succeed in showing that Noem’s actions “are not authorized by the law, arbitrary and capricious and motivated by unconstitutional animus”.
Chen found the arguments of the government without persuasion and said that many derogatory and false comments of Noem – and by Trump – labeling the Venezuelans as criminals show that the racial animus was a motivator in the end of the protections.
“Acting on the basis of a negative group stereotype and generalizing such stereotype to the whole group is the classic example of racism,” wrote Chen.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
