By Michael Casey
BOSTON (AP) – A federal judge said Thursday that it would prevent the Trump administration from ending a program that has enabled the hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to temporarily live in the United States.
The American district judge Indira Talwani that she will make a stay in the program, which was to end later this month. The push to help more than half a million Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguois and Venezuelans is part of a wider legal effort to protect nationals of Ukraine, Afghanistan and other countries which are legally.
During the hearing, Talwani repeatedly presented the government’s assertion to end the program – namely that it has the power to do and that it no longer served their objective. She argued that immigrants from the program are now faced with an option to “flee the country” or stay and “risk losing everything”.
“The NUB of the problem here is that the secretary, by interrupting the parole period granted to these people, must have a reasoned decision,” said Talwani, adding that the explanation to end the program was “based on an incorrect reading of the law”.
Last month, the administration revoked legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, preparing them for potential expulsion in 30 days. Internal security secretary Kristi Noem said that they will lose their legal status on April 24.
They arrived with financial sponsors and received two-year permits to live and work in the United States during this period, the beneficiaries necessary to find other legal paths if they wanted to stay in the American parole were a temporary status.
President Donald Trump ended the legal paths for immigrants to come to the United States, the implementation of the campaign promises to deport millions of people in the United States illegally.
Apart from the court, defenders of immigration, including Guerline Jozef, founder and executive director of Haitian Bridge Foundation, one of the complainants of the trial, said that the attacks on this program contradict the Trump administration strategy.
“We hear the story of the people who came illegally and the administration wanting to erase illegal immigration,” said Jozef. “But, we clearly see today that this is not the case. Even people who have legal status, pay their taxes and work are attacked. ”
In motion before the hearing, the complainants qualified the action of the administration of “unprecedented” and said that this would result in the loss of their legal status and their ability to work. Also listening to the move “contrary to the law within the meaning of the law on administrative procedure”, which defines the procedures that agencies must follow when the rules were created.
Lawyers of the Trump administration argued that the complainants lacked positions and that the decision of the US Department of Internal Security having an impact on immigrants from the program, known as CHNV, has not violated the Act respecting the administrative procedure. They also said that the complainants could not show that the termination of the program was illegal.
“The DHS decision to terminate the CHNV program and existing parole subsidies under this program are in this statutory authority and to contain the requirements of law and regulations,” they wrote. “In addition, given the temporary nature of the preexisting incapacity for the parole of the CHNV and the CHNV parole to request restarts within the framework of the program, their misdeeds are counterbalanced by the prejudices to the public if the secretary is not authorized to interrupt a program which it has determined does not serve public interest.”
The end of the temporary protections of these immigrants generated little political return among the Republicans other than three American Cuban representatives of Florida who called to prevent the expulsion of the affected Venezuelans. One of them, the representative Maria Salazar of Miami, also joined around 200 Democrats in the Congress this week in the Copar Arrow of a bill which would allow them to become legitimate permanent residents.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
