By Janie Har
San Francisco (AP) – A federal judge interrupted the Trump administration plans on Monday to put an end to temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, a week before expiration.
The ordinance of the American district judge Edward Chen in San Francisco is a recovery for 350,000 Venezuelans whose temporary protected status was to expire on April 7. The trial was filed by lawyers for the National TPS Alliance and TPS holders across the country.
Internal security secretary Kristi Noem also announced the end of TPS for around 250,000 additional venezuelans in September.
Chen said in his decision that Noem’s action “threatens to: inflict irreparable damage to hundreds of thousands of people whose life, families and livelihoods will be seriously disrupted, will cost the United States of billions of economic activities and injuring public health and security in the United States communities.”
He declared that the government had not identified “real prejudice in the continuous TPS for the Venezuelan beneficiaries” and declared that the applicants will probably succeed in showing that the actions of Noem “are not authorized by the law, arbitrary and capricious and motivated by unconstitutional animus”.
Chen, who was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama, a democrat, said that his order applies to the national scale.
He gave the government for a week to file a notice of a call and the complainants a week to stop for a break for 500,000 Haitians whose TPS protections should expire in August. Alejandro Mayorkas, the previous secretary, extended protections for the three cohorts in 2026.
The Ministry of Internal Security did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
The Congress created TP, as the law is known in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries with natural disasters or civilian conflicts, giving people permission to live and work in the United States by increasing up to 18 months if the Secretary of Homeland Security judges the conditions in their country of origin are not safe.
The inversions are an important importance on immigration policies under former president Joe Biden, a democrat, and come as republican president Donald Trump and his best aids welcomed attacks against the judges who govern against them, immigration being at the forefront of many disagreements.
During a hearing last Monday, the lawyers for TPS holders said that Noem did not have the power to cancel the protections and that his actions were partly motivated by racism. They asked the judge to suspend Noem’s orders, citing irreparable damage to TPS holders struggling with the fear of expulsion and the potential separation of family members.
Noem government lawyers said the Congress had given the secretary and a broad authority to take determinations related to the TPS program and that decisions were not subject to a legal examination. Applicants are not allowed to thwart the secretary’s orders to be carried out, they said.
In public remarks, Noem described the Venezuelans in the United States as “earth bags” and confused TPS holders with the members of a Venezuelan gang even if the vast majority have no criminal history, said Ahilan Arulanantham, lawyer for the Center for Law and Immigration Policy at the University of California, Localing School.
“It seems to defame an entire group of 600,000 Venezuelans who are here with this image,” Chen Judge for government lawyers. “Isn’t that almost the definition of racism?”
Sarah Vuong, with the United States Ministry of Justice, said that Noem was motivated by the government’s objectives on the border and national security, not in racism.
Biden has greatly expanded the use of TPS and other temporary forms of protection in a strategy to create and develop legal paths to live in the United States while suspended asylum for those who illegally enter.
Trump questioned the impartiality of a federal judge who blocked his plans to expel Venezuelan immigrants in El Salvador, exceeding his criticisms only a few hours before his administration asked the Court of Appeal to lift the judge’s order.
The administration also said that it revoked temporary protections for more than 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaragen and Venezuelans who have come to the United States since October 2022 by another Legal Avenue called humanitarian conditional liberation, that Biden used more than any other president. Their two -year work permits will expire on April 24.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
