A federal judge in Illinois blocked the Trump administration from ending deportation protections for about 3,670 Burmese nationals living in the United States, a setback to President Trump’s mass deportation campaign and effort to curtail a program for hundreds of thousands of migrants fleeing crisis at home.
Judge Matthew F. Kennelly of the U.S. District Court in Northern Illinois wrote in a 57- page opinion that there was significant evidence that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status for Burmese immigrants was arbitrary and capricious. He wrote that the decision did not properly consider conditions in Myanmar, also known as Burma, a Southeast Asian country that is suffering a yearslong civil war. In more than four years, tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions more have been displaced.
Judge Kennelly ruled that there was significant evidence that Noem’s decision to end the protections was predetermined, based on the goal of administration officials to eliminate Temporary Protected Status for all immigrants, regardless of the circumstances in their countries.
He said that even as Ms. Noem justified the termination, asserting that circumstances in Burma had improved enough that deportations could proceed, other Trump administration officials reported “violence against civilians including airstrikes, shelling, and razing of villages, human trafficking, and dire humanitarian need” amid what has been a brutal conflict driven in part by ethnic tensions.
“Secretary Noem has, since her confirmation, terminated T.P.S. for each and every country that has been eligible for redesignation,” Judge Kennelly wrote. He said it is more likely that T.P.S. was terminated “to effectuate the secretary’s broader goal of curtailing immigration and eliminating T.P.S. generally, not on her evaluation of changed conditions in Burma.”
The Biden administration first designated Burmese nationals as eligible in 2021 for the program, which allows them to live and work in the United States without risk of deportation, in the aftermath of a military coup that sparked the civil war. The designation was set to expire on Jan. 26.
Chris Cameron is a Times reporter covering Washington, focusing on breaking news and the Trump administration.
The post Federal Judge Extends Deportation Protections for Burmese Migrants appeared first on New York Times.
