Redacted by El Perico.
Omaha.– 50 days after November’s presidential election, and in search of Latinx votes, Donald Trump’s administration lashed out at immigrants again. The Federal Court of Appeals in California ruled on Monday in favor of the U.S. government’s decision to terminate Temporary Protection Status (TPS) that allows more than 300,000 migrants from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Sudan to work and reside in the country.
The California District Ninth Court determined, with two votes in favor and one against, that a federal judge of that state “abused their discretion” by temporarily prohibiting the government from eliminating the immigration benefit that protects these migrants from deportation, the website voanoticia.com reported.
The ruling is also expected to affect migrants from Honduras and Nepal, who are in a similar situation.
The TPS program has allowed for decades that hundreds of thousands of migrants from certain nations, already in the United States, can live and work legally in the country—as a result, some deportation processes are halted.
According to the Department of Justice, the TPS is assigned to countries where there is an armed conflict or where a natural disaster has occurred.
In this regard, the panel that made the decision ruled that there is no “judicial review” by the Department of Homeland Security for the decision to end the TPS.
Now what?
For now, TPS beneficiaries can reside and work in the US until January 4th, 2021. However, according to a decision of the Department of Homeland Security in November 2019, migrants will have a grace period of 120 days to leave the country, except Salvadorans, who have 365 days.
That is, the grace period is until March 5th, 2021. However, the term of stay of Salvadorans under the TPS will expire on November 5th next year, due to an agreement with the government of the Central American country.
The Trump administration justifies the decision to give Salvadorans more time by claiming that more than half of the total beneficiaries of this program are Salvadorans, the news portal retold.
According to data from the Congressional Research Service, there are currently more than 417,341 enrolled in TPS throughout the US, of which 90% are from El Salvador (251,445), Honduras (80,570), Haiti (56,114) and Nicaragua (4,508).
Seeking to appeal ruling
The American Civil Rights Union (ACLUU), which is part of the legal representation of TPS beneficiaries, in addition to other organizations, has already announced that it plans to appeal the ruling, which could reach the Supreme Court.
“We will continue to fight in the judicial system, on the streets, in the corridors of Congress and in the court of public opinion. We will exhaust all legal remedies at our disposal to protect our community,” explained the national leader of the TPS National Alliance, one of the protesting organizations, in a statement.
The organization argues that the decision affects not only more than 300,000 people who live legally in the U.S. thanks to the TPS but an estimated 250,000 U.S. citizens, children of migrants, who “could be forced to make the impossible decision to choose between their families and their homes.”
Finally, the judges explained the decision to terminate the TPS does not respond to “racial animadversion against migrants.”
*With voanoticia.com
More than 300,000 migrants could be deported after Federal Court ruling to end TPS
