A Biden-appointed federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from removing Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from more than 63,000 Nicaraguan, Honduran and Nepali migrants, flouting the Supreme Court’s recent decisions lifting similar orders.
Judge Trina Thompson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California deployed the race card profusely in her 37-page ruling.
“The freedom to live fearlessly, the opportunity of liberty, and the American dream,” Thompson wrote. “That is all Plaintiffs seek. Instead, they are told to atone for their race, leave because of their names, and purify their blood. The Court disagrees.”
The judge also accused the Trump administration of “demonstrating racial and discriminatory animus.”
“Color is neither a poison nor a crime,” she stated on her ruling.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had imposed a Sept. 8 deadline for the Nicaraguan, Honduran and Nepali migrants to leave the country or lose their protected status.
The Supreme Court has already ruled in favor of the Trump administration in similar cases, staying lower courts’ orders.
In May, the Justices granted an emergency appeal from the Trump administration, allowing it to revoke TPS from 350,000 Venezuelans.
And again on May 30, the Supreme Court on Friday granted the Department of Homeland Security permission to revoke the legal status of the more than half a million immigrants who flew into the U.S. from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela via Joe Biden’s disputed mass parole program.
Thompson, in a case virtually indistinguishable from the Venezuelan case, compared the Trump administration’s deportation efforts to the “transatlantic slave trade.”
During oral argument, Plaintiffs argued that granting unfettered discretion over TPS terminations would allow the President to give or take TPS away from some country whenever he feels like it or for the purpose of trade negotiations. The Court recognizes that the United States has a long history of transporting individuals against their will, to places unfamiliar to them, and for the purposes of trade. For example, the United States was an active participant in the transatlantic slave trade which uprooted individuals in Africa and brought them to this continent.
The emancipation of slaves saw the same pattern, but in reverse. Many whites were uncomfortable with the idea of free non-white people in their communities, even if they had lived in the United States for generations.
“There’s not an iota of law in this page-long footnote,” The Article III Project’s Will Chamberlain pointed out on X. “It’s nothing but citations to academic sociologists.”
“John Roberts needs to put his foot down. For all the nonsense talk of President Trump defying court orders, it is liberal lower court judges like Trina Thompson who are defying the Supreme Court,” Chamberlain said.