The Trump administration’s effort to strip hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan and Haitian migrants of legal protections is unlawful, a US judge says.
The ruling by District Judge Edward Chen sets aside the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) attempt to end temporary protected status (TPS) for people from countries experiencing conditions that make it dangerous to return.
It will allow around 600,000 Venezuelans and 500,000 Haitians to continue living and working legally in the US. The DHS has indicated it will appeal the decision.
The TPS program was established by Congress in 1990 to give temporary protections for migrants from countries experiencing war and natural disasters.
In a 69-page decision, Judge Chen wrote that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s action in revoking their protected status “was not only unprecedented in the manner and speed in which it was taken but also violates the law.”
He said conditions in their home countries was “so dangerous that even the State Department advises against travel”.
In response to the ruling, a DHS spokesperson told the BBC the scheme had been “abused, exploited, and politicised as a de facto amnesty program”, while indicating it would assess its legal options.
“Unelected activist judges cannot stop the will of the American people for a safe and secure homeland,” the spokesperson added.
There are about 600,000 migrants who have TPS from Venezuela, the largest country included in the program. Former President Joe Biden extended the program to include Haiti, Afghanistan, Cameroon and Ukraine.
President Donald Trump sought to reverse the extension when he returned to office earlier this year and also attempted to terminate the designation for Venezuela altogether.
In March, the administration, making good on Trump’s campaign promise of cracking down on immigration, said it will revoke the temporary legal status of more than half a million migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Those migrants were warned to leave the country before their permits and deportation shields were cancelled on 24 April.
The National TPS Alliance and Venezuelan TPS holders sued the Trump administration and DHS earlier this year, arguing that Noem did not have the authority to unilaterally roll back the extension granted by the previous administration.
In May, the Supreme Court froze an earlier ruling and allowed the Trump administration to end the TPS program for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.
But Judge Chen, the California federal judge, said in his ruling on Friday that the high court’s decision only dealt with preliminary relief he ordered.
It did not preclude him, he wrote, from issuing fresh orders.
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