A federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday found that the Trump administration illegally moved to end temporary deportation protections for tens of thousands of people from Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua. The ruling was a blow to the administration’s efforts to limit the reach of a humanitarian program meant to shield migrants from deportation to countries in crisis.
In her ruling, Judge Trina L. Thompson found that the efforts of the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, to terminate protections for people from the three countries had been preordained and driven by an intent to target the Temporary Protected Status program, known as T.P.S.
In a 52-page ruling, she wrote that the government’s review of the program was conducted with a predetermined outcome and the ultimate decisions in June and July to cancel the program for migrants from the countries had failed to address key issues, notably “food insecurity in Nepal, staggering crime in Honduras, or humanitarian crises in Nicaragua.”
Judge Thompson, an appointee of President Joseph R. Biden Jr., also said that immigration advocates who had sued over the program cancellations had plausibly argued that the cancellations were motivated by racial animus. She cited statements from President Trump and Ms. Noem that repeatedly cast migrants, including those covered by the humanitarian program, as violent criminals seeking to invade the United States.
“These statements reflect a stereotyping of the immigrants protected under the TPS program as criminal invaders and perpetuate the discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population,” Judge Thompson wrote.
The National T.P.S. Alliance, which brought the suit alongside seven individual T.P.S. holders, said that though it celebrated the ruling, the cancellations had already caused harm. In a statement from the group, one of the plaintiffs, a 30-year-old man from Honduras named Jhony Silva, said he had been living in the United States since he was 3 and had lost his job as a certified nursing assistant because of the cancellation.
The Homeland Security Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Some 50,000 Hondurans, 7,000 Nepalis and 3,000 Nicaraguans are covered under Temporary Protected Status, according to the Congressional Research Service. The decades-old program allows people from countries facing armed conflict, natural disasters and other catastrophes to temporarily live and work in the United States, and protections for migrants from some countries have been renewed for years as turmoil in their nations continues.
The program has been a target of Mr. Trump’s administration deportation efforts. In total, it has moved to eliminate the program for more than one million people from eight countries this year.
On Tuesday, a federal judge in Boston temporarily blocked the government from ending T.P.S. for some 230 migrants from South Sudan, a country still reeling from recent civil war and famine.
In emergency orders, the Supreme Court, however, has allowed the government to end T.P.S. for other groups, even as litigation over the program has continued. In October, for instance, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the government to end T.P.S. for more than 300,000 people from Venezuela, which has been gripped by years of humanitarian and economic crisis.
Anushka Patil is a Times reporter covering breaking and developing news around the world.
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