A federal appeals court ruled in favor of President Trump on Wednesday, allowing his administration to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 60,000 migrants from Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal.
In a unanimous decision, the three-member panel of judges on the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals halted a lower court order that had blocked the Trump administration from eliminating temporary deportation protections and revoking work permits from the migrants.
“The government’s motion for a stay pending appeal … is granted,” Circuit Judges Michael Hawkins ( a Bill Clinton appointee), Consuelo Callahan (a George W. Bush appointee) and Eric Miller (Trump appointee) wrote in their brief, two-page ruling, which did not explain the decision.
Last month, San Francisco-based District Judge Trina Thompson, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, had paused Trump’s planned elimination of TPS for migrants from the three countries until Nov. 18.
Thompson accused Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of being “motivated by racial animus” in her controversial opinion.
“The freedom to live fearlessly, the opportunity of liberty, and the American dream. That is all Plaintiffs seek,” the judge wrote in her July 31 order. “Instead, they are told to atone for their race, leave because of their names, and purify their blood. The Court disagrees.”
Thompson even included a comparison of the Trump administration’s immigration policies to the trans-Atlantic slave trade in her now-overturned ruling.
Hondurans and Nicaraguans had been given the legal status to emigrate and get work permits as a federal response to humanitarian issues following Hurricane Mitch in 1998, when the storm hit both countries, killing almost 7,300 people.
Nepal joined the TPS program in June 2015 after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked the country.
Earlier this year, Noem announced that the protections would be revoked, and she offered a plane ticket and a $1,000 “exit bonus” to migrants willing to self-deport immediately.
“Temporary Protected Status was designed to be just that — temporary,” the DHS secretary said in a statement at the time.
Noem also maintained that the nations have since recovered from the natural disasters that prompted their enrollment in the program.
Protections for Nepalese migrants were set to expire Aug. 5, and Honduran and Nicaraguan migrants will be pushed out of the program in September. Around 51,000 Hondurans, 7,200 Nepalis and 2,900 Nicaraguans are currently in the TPS program without more permanent green-card status, according to DHS statistics previously reported by CBS News.
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