A Biden-appointed federal judge in California has said that the Trump administration cannot set about revoking Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 60,000 immigrants in the US from Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua. District Judge Trina Thompson said that the decision to revoke that status was due to "racial and discriminatory animus."
The decision to remove the TPS protections came from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who was not spared in Thompson's ruling. "Color is neither a poison nor a crime," said Thompson. Noem said that the TPS status of these immigrants would not be renewed.
Thompson said that she had reviewed statements from Noem and President Donald Trump and determined that these amplified "the discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population."
"By stereotyping the TPS program and immigrants as invaders that are criminal, and by highlighting the need for migration management, Secretary Noem’s statements perpetuate the discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population," Thompson said.
"The freedom to live fearlessly, the opportunity of liberty, and the American dream. That is all Plaintiffs seek," Thompson said in her ruling. "Instead, they are told to atone for their race, leave because of their names, and purify their blood. The Court disagrees."
Thompson went on to say that statements from Noem show her "animus against immigrants and the TPS program even though individuals with TPS hold lawful status — a protected status that was expressly conferred by Congress with the purpose of providing humanitarian relief."
She said that the presence of the TPS persons "is not a crime. Rather, TPS holders already live in the United States and have contributed billions to the economy by legally working in jobs, paying taxes, and paying contributions into Medicare and Social Security."
Under the Biden administration, TPS was renewed repeatedly, though the TPS term is only for 18-24 months. Those eligible for TPS are from unstable countries and permitted to reside in the US until their own countries are safe for return. Some migrants, however, spend many, many years in the US on this program.
The Hill reports that were TPS to end, "51,000 Hondurans and nearly 3,000 Nicaraguans who have been in the country for roughly 25 years" would be required to leave the US ahead of a September expiration while "some 7,000 Nepalese citizens were also set to lose protections in just days."
One of Biden's final acts on immigration came in early January 2025, when he announced the extension of TPS for some 1 million immigrants from Venezuela, El Salvador, Ukraine, and Sudan through fall 2026. Biden announced the extends uncharacteristically early to prevent Trump from refusing to renew them.
Thompson complained that DHS looked only at the recovery of some conditions in the status-holders home countries, such as recovery from natural disasters, but not others.
"Unlike previous iterations of DHS notices on Honduras, the Honduras notice does not mention political violence or crime," Thompson said.
"The new notice also omits the anti-democratic human rights violations and the humanitarian crisis which has led to 108,000 people fleeing the country," Thompson went on, discussing Nicaragua.
"The notice," she continued, "concedes that ‘Nepal has continued to experience subsequent regional environmental events, including flooding and landslides’ and that ‘Nepal remains one of the poorest countries in the world’ but nevertheless finds that modest economic growth (two percent) and reconstruction efforts support a termination of Nepal’s TPS designation."
Those 60,000 migrants in the US under temporary protected status now, per Thompson, have their stay extended until at least November 18. Their status was set to expire in August and September. Noem has attempted to allow the temporary protected status of those in the program, which was begun by Congress in 1990, to expire.
Thompson is not the first judge to put a stop to Noem's attempt to end the program. The Supreme Court, however, said in May that the Trump administration could end TPS for 350,000 Venezuelans and in another ruling, the court said that the status for 532,000 persons in the US on that status from Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela could be ended.
