A federal judge ruled Friday that the Trump administration broke the law when it sought to revoke a last-minute Biden renewal of Temporary Protected Status — a form of deportation amnesty — for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan and Haitian migrants.
Judge Edward Chen, an Obama appointee to the court in California, issued a summary judgment siding with the migrants and rejecting the government’s defense.
In doing so he sidestepped a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that had allowed Homeland Security to carry out its wind-down of the program. Judge Chen said the justices’ previous ruling applied only to the judge’s previous ruling but didn’t block him from revisiting the issue, “adjudicating the case on the merits and entering a final judgment.”
Judge Chen accused Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of “racism” toward Venezuelans by citing the acts of members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that has infiltrated the U.S., as reason to deny all Venezuelans the deportation amnesty. The judge said President Trump was nearly as bad, with “derogatory and baseless claims” about Haitian migrants eating pets in Ohio.
In terms of the law itself, he said the TPS statute does not allow for a termination midway through an 18-month renewal, which is what Ms. Noem tried to do.
“They did so even though this action is not, as the Ninth Circuit has strongly indicated, statutorily authorized,” he wrote.
Some 500,000 Venezuelans were protected by TPS at the end of March, as were more than 330,000 Haitians — by far the two largest grants.
Just before leaving office, then-Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a new renewal of TPS for the Venezuelans, even though the current grant still had months to go. That was seen as an attempt to lock in their status well into the Trump era.
Judge Chen on Friday blessed that effort, and said Mr. Trump’s efforts to unwind it were illegal.
He acknowledged his ruling is likely to face a speedy appeal.
For now, though, it won praise from immigration groups — though they said the ruling came too late for some who were already deported after the Supreme Court’s previous action.
“While harm already done cannot be undone, we hope today’s ruling can give some reprieve to over a million people whose lives have continued to be threatened by this extreme administration,” said Erik Crew, a lawyer at the Haitian Bridge Alliance.
Ms. Noem, separately from the revocations, has announced she will not renew TPS for Venezuela.
TPS is supposed to be granted to citizens of countries facing war, natural disaster or political upheaval. The theory is that it gives the countries themselves more room to recover, and the migrants a reprieve from returning home to chaos.
It is supposed to last as long as the conditions in the home country persist.
Venezuela remains in upheaval, but Homeland Security said the consequences of the massive flow of illegal immigrants from that country demanded a rethink.
“Weighing public safety, national security, migration factors, immigration policy, economic considerations, and foreign policy, it’s clear that allowing Venezuelan nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is not in America’s best interest,” said Matthew Tragesser, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.