The Trump administration is facing another legal challenge over its immigration policies, after it was reported Temporary Protected Status (TPS) would be cancelled for thousands of Afghans and Cameroonians.
In a court filing shared exclusively with Newsweek, immigration advocacy group CASA said it was suing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristie Noem and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for failing to use official channels to cancel the legal status of individuals who had fled violence and instability in their home countries.
“The reason that CASA is bringing this case is because we have thousands of members who are impacted here, and nobody knows what is going on. All we have to go on is a quote in a newspaper around the intention to terminate for Cameroon and Afghanistan,” Nick Katz, general counsel for CASA, told Newsweek Thursday.
“But our members don’t know if they’re going to be able to continue working after the termination date. They don’t know if they’re going to be subject to enforcement, and that concern is really heightened in the environment that we’re in right now.”
Newsweek reached out to DHS for comment via email Thursday but did not immediately hear back.
Why It Matters
The Trump administration has been critical of the use of TPS and the multiple extensions granted by consecutive secretaries of Homeland Security, including those granted by the Biden administration between 2017 and 2021. The White House views the program as a way for temporary migrants to overstay their welcome. Some countries have already seen their status cancelled since the day Trump took office.
What To Know
This latest lawsuit, one of several challenging the president’s immigration policies, comes after the New York Times first reported that TPS would be allowed to lapse for Afghans after May 20.
DHS told the media on April 11 that Secretary Noem had determined Afghanistan no longer met the requirements for TPS – that is a country facing ongoing conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary or temporary conditions.
CASA believes this to not be true, and that those it represents from both Afghanistan and Cameroon could be subjected to deportation to countries where they previously faced persecution, torture and ongoing political turmoil.
One TPS holder and plaintiff is identified as O.M. in the complaint. She is a senior citizen from Cameroon, who now lives in Maryland. She works as a home health assistant and relies on TPS for work authorization.
“Losing TPS exposes me to the risk of being forced to return to a country where I am not safe,” she said in a press release first shared with Newsweek. “I faced physical abuse all because of my religious faith when I lived in Cameroon. I can’t go back and suffer that again. This is my home.”
Katz said CASA had thousands of members facing similar uncertainties, including those who fled the Taliban in Afghanistan.
“They are part of the fabric of our communities, they have United States children who rely on them, so this is creating fear that they will be separated from their families,” Katz said.
The scrapping of TPS for those from Afghanistan potentially affects about 8,200 people, per the National Immigration Forum. For Cameroon, that number is around 3,260, compared to the over 300,000 from Venezuela alone.
Trump has said that former President Joe Biden abused both TPS and humanitarian parole – two programs which grant temporary legal status to immigrants. TPS is offered to those from countries affected by conflict, natural disasters and political turmoil already within the U.S. and protects them from deportation.
Humanitarian parole is a temporary visa program allowing vetted, sponsored immigrants to fly into the country and stay for a certain period of time, at which point they can then apply for more permanent legal status. Attempts to dramatically cut this system back, which would create thousands of new undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., have been widely challenged in court.
This latest challenge alleges that DHS did not go through the standard process for ending TPS designation required by Congress, which requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to give 60 days’ notice.
“I think it’s very clear from the text in the name of the statute that this is a temporary status, but if the administration is going to end it, it has to do so in a lawful way. And there’s a very straightforward and clearly delineated procedure for doing that, and the government just didn’t do that here,” Sam Siegel, senior counsel at ICAP, told Newsweek.
What’s Next
The lawsuit is calling for a stay on the plans to end TPS before May 20, when Afghanistan’s designation is set to lapse. DHS is yet to formally acknowledge the suit or indicate how it would respond.
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