Judge blocks DHS from stripping protections for 60K from Nepal, Honduras, Nicaragua

A federal judge ruled against Trump administration plans to end protections from deportation for citizens of Nepal, Nicaragua and Honduras, barring their removal while the case continues.

San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson agreed the plaintiffs had shown there was sufficient racial animus behind the decision and that the Trump administration had failed to undertake an “objective review of the country conditions” before ending protections.

“The freedom to live fearlessly, the opportunity of liberty, and the American dream. That is all Plaintiffs seek. Instead, they are told to atone for their race, leave because of their names, and purify their blood," Thompson wrote. "The Court disagrees."

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Nepal in June and for Nicaragua and Honduras in July. Each country was initially designated after natural disasters, but the protections can also be offered to people unable to be deported to their home country due to civil unrest.

The moves would require 51,000 Hondurans and nearly 3,000 Nicaraguans who have been in the country for roughly 25 years to leave the county by September. Some 7,000 Nepalese citizens were also set to lose protections in just days.

Thompson reviewed a number of prior comments from President Trump as well as Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem, including comments from the secretary referring to migrants as criminals and gang members, and the president stating that migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.”

“Indeeed, code words may demonstrate discriminatory intent,” she wrote. “Color is neither a poison nor a crime.”

Thompson said the DHS failed to do the fulsome review required to end TPS, determining the Trump administration did not consider conditions beyond recovery from the hurricanes that rocked the Central American countries and the earthquake that sparked the designation for Nepal. 

“Unlike previous iterations of DHS notices on Honduras, the Honduras notice does not mention political violence or crime,” the judge wrote.

“The new notice also omits the anti-democratic human rights violations and the humanitarian crisis which has led to 108,000 people fleeing the country,” Thompson said of Nicaragua.

She added, "The notice concedes that ‘Nepal has continued to experience subsequent regional environmental events, including flooding and landslides’ and that ‘Nepal remains one of the poorest countries in the world’ but nevertheless finds that modest economic growth (two percent) and reconstruction efforts support a termination of Nepal’s TPS designation."

The Trump administration has argued citizens of all three nations have remained in the country well beyond the natural disasters that ignited TPS and that past administrations have abused a protection designed to be temporary.

But Thompson determined the administration failed to rebut arguments that citizens of the three countries should be allowed to remain in the U.S. while the trial continues.

“Although Defendants argue that a delay in the Secretary’s decisions would undermine United States foreign policy and national interests, Defendants have failed to identify the exact foreign policy or national interest at stake,” she wrote.