[GaroweOnline] A Massachusetts-based federal judge on Friday lifted her stay in a case brought by Somali holders of temporary protected status (TPS), clearing the way for the Trump administration to begin deporting them.The ruling from U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs lifts an administrative stay she issued after the Supreme Court decided in a related case that the judiciary had no power to review the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) termination of TPS for Haiti and Syria.
Burroughs wrote that though the Somali plaintiffs had made a compelling case, the high court ruling meant she was "bound ... to view things through the Mullin prism," citing the court case bearing Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s name that ended TPS for the two countries at issue before the Supreme Court.
"Plaintiffs have made a convincing showing that they will suffer irreparable harm if the injunction is withheld ... and the balance of hardships and the public interest also favor Plaintiffs, given that the government has made no showing that maintaining TPS status for the duration of this litigation would impose an undue burden," she wrote.
Somalia was first designated for TPS in 1991, a status given when the government determines it is too dangerous to deport
The ruling highlights the difficulty for citizens of the remaining TPS countries to challenge the termination of their designation.
Burroughs reviewed a series of arguments made by plaintiffs that were largely unwound by the Mullin decision, which limited the extent to which disparaging remarks made by Trump administration staff — comments plaintiffs have argued showed racial animus — could be considered.
"Though Plaintiffs lay out a strong case for why the at-issue statements were racist ... after Mullin, which included a constitutional race-discrimination claim, the Court cannot discern a path to concluding that Plaintiffs will succeed on the merits of this claim," she wrote.
The plaintiffs had noted that President Trump had made several comments about Somali people specifically, including in the wake of a fraud investigation in Minnesota that was followed by widespread immigration raids. Approximately 700 TPS holders are impacted by Friday’s decision.
"This circumstantial evidence clearly shows that Somalia and its people are being targeted, but after Mullin, that is not sufficient to sustain a race-based equal protection claim," the judge wrote.
A federal judge on Friday cleared the way for U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to strip nearly 1,100 Somalis of legal protections against deportation that have allowed them to live and work in the United States.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston allowed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to terminate the Temporary Protected Status designation for Somalia after the U.S. Supreme Court in June allowed the administration to end similar protections for thousands of people from Haiti and Syria.
The Supreme Court’s ruling, powered by its 6-3 conservative majority, curtailed the ability of judges to review DHS efforts under Trump to end TPS designations for 13 countries that provided humanitarian immigration protection to eligible migrants from those nations..
Two other judges last week allowed the administration to similarly end TPS for South Sudan and Myanmar. Only the end of TPS for Ethiopia remains blocked by a judge.
Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in January announced plans to end TPS for Somalis, arguing Somalia’s conditions had improved, despite ongoing fighting between Somali forces and al-Shabaab militants.
Burroughs, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, in March blocked Noem’s decision from taking effect in a lawsuit brought by four Somalis and two advocacy groups including African Communities Together.
The plaintiffs argued the administration sought to end TPS for Somalia due to bias against non-white immigrants, pointing to Trump’s past descriptions of Somalis as “garbage” and “low IQ people.”
After the Supreme Court ruled, Burroughs issued a new order that continued to temporarily block the end of the Somalis’ TPS while she considered whether to allow the plaintiffs to try to challenge DHS action on grounds the Supreme Court’s ruling did not address.
U.S. Federal Court Rules in Favor of Afghan Refugee Families
[ToloNews] A U.S. federal court has ruled that travel restrictions imposed by the White House cannot prevent the families of Afghan refugees who supported U.S. forces in Afghanistan from reuniting with them in the United States.
The U.S. newspaper Stars and Stripes reported that a federal district judge has given the U.S. State Department 15 days to respond to a lawsuit filed by seven Afghan nationals.
According to Stars and Stripes: “U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga’s decision Wednesday gave the State Department 15 days to issue travel documents to the families of five of the seven refugee plaintiffs.”
The report noted that the families of these Afghan nationals had already been approved to enter the United States.
Under the court’s ruling, the U.S. State Department has also been ordered to review the cases of other Afghan families seeking reunification.
“The agency must also reconsider travel eligibility for the other relatives waiting to reunite with loved ones, and it was ordered to disregard the ban in its reassessment,” Trenga said.
The court also ordered the U.S. State Department to submit progress reports every two weeks until the families arrive in the United States.
The U.S. State Department has not yet commented on the ruling or indicated whether it plans to appeal.
The lawsuit was filed in the state of Virginia in October last year. The defendants include the U.S. government, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.