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SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration can resume terminations of Temporary Protected Status for more than 60,000 immigrants from Nepal, Nicaragua and Honduras.
A Ninth Circuit panel granted the federal government’s emergency stay it requested after a lower court postponed the termination of the Temporary Protected Status program for the three countries until Nov. 18 while litigation plays out.
However, the three-judge panel denied the government’s request to stay the proceedings of the district court, saying that “management of the docket is within the discretion of the district court.”
“The government has stated that it intends to move for reassignment of this case to a different district judge, but it has not shown that the possibility of such a future motion justifies a stay of proceedings at this time,” the Ninth Circuit said.
The panel — consisting of U.S. Circuit Judge Michael Hawkins, a Bill Clinton appointee, U.S. Circuit Judge Consuelo Callahan, a George W. Bush appointee, and U.S. Circuit Judge Eric Miller, a Donald Trump appointee — did not give any reasoning for its decision and set a deadline of seven days for the parties to submit proposed schedules to govern further proceedings of the case.
The ruling greenlights the Trump administration to go ahead with its termination of TPS status for Nepal, which had been scheduled to expire Aug. 6. Temporary protections for Honduras and Nicaragua are not set to expire until Sept. 8.
Ahilan Arulanantham of the UCLA School of Law’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy, which represented the National TPS Alliance, said that Nepali TPS holders will lose their employment authorization immediately without further court intervention, potentially becoming subject to detention and deportation if they lack any other status.
Individuals from Nicaragua and Honduras will also face a similar fate as of Sept. 8.
“The court’s failure to provide any reasoning for its decision, including why this was an ‘emergency,’ falls far short of what due process requires, and our clients deserve,” Arulanantham said.
“The decision simply sanctions the government’s power grab, exposing tens of thousands of people to illegal detention and deportation. They deserve better than what this court has done today.”
The TPS program protects individuals from certain countries due to violence or economic duress. While those with TPS status can’t be deported and can work legally in the U.S., they do not have a path to U.S. citizenship.
National TPS Alliance and individual TPS holders from Nepal, Nicaragua and Honduras sued the Trump administration on July 7, claiming Noem’s actions terminating protections for the three countries violated the Administrative Procedure Act and were motivated by racial animus.
On July 31, U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson, a Joe Biden appointee, postponed the termination of the TPS program for Nepal, Nicaragua and Honduras until Nov. 18. Four days later, the government appealed the issue to the Ninth Circuit.
In oral arguments on Tuesday, the federal government argued that it was suffering irreparable harm from the district court’s ruling, as it blocked the administration from implementing its immigration policy.
“We are already suffering irreparable harm in that one of the terminations would have taken effect on Aug. 6, and so the stay is already causing harm,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign, representing the Department of Homeland Security, said.
“Otherwise, this would have taken effect, and this would have permitted the government to take a variety of enforcement actions, given the suspension of temporary status," he added.
The government also defended its position that Noem’s order terminating TPS status for the three countries is judicially unreviewable, saying that Congress prohibited judicial review of “any determination with respect to” a TPS termination.
Much of the federal government’s argument relied on a Supreme Court decision from March that allowed the Department of Homeland Security to strip safeguards for Venezuelan immigrants, calling it “strikingly similar” to the current case.
Attorneys for the government could not immediately be reached for comment.
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