Did you catch that? Hundreds of thousands of invaders are being prevented from deportation. And all because Trump said something mean.
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to temporarily halt its plan to end a special federal immigration program that has allowed hundreds of thousands of immigrants to legally live and work in the U.S. for decades.
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen ruled that the administration may have side-stepped federal rule-making guidelines, imposed undue political pressure on staffers, and violated the Equal Protection Clause by basing its decision “on animus against non-white, non-European immigrants.”
The ruling is the latest blow against President Donald Trump’s efforts to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, following court orders limiting his travel ban targeting majority Muslim countries, his attempt to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and his policy of separating migrant families along the southwest border.
The preliminary injunction ordered by Chen prevents the deportation of an estimated 240,000 immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan, who were facing a series of deadlines starting in November to depart the country or risk becoming undocumented immigrants. These immigrants had been granted permission to be in the U.S. under the Temporary Protected Status program, better known as TPS. The humanitarian program was created in 1990 to help immigrants from countries that suffered war or major natural disasters.
The Department of Homeland Security, which manages TPS, has argued that the program has been wrongly extended for years, and that conditions in those four countries are now suitable for thousands of their residents to return home.
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The judge listed:
– Trump’s comments during his June 2015 speech announcing his candidacy when he characterized Mexicans as drug dealers, criminals and rapists.
– His December 2015 call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
– A report in the Washington Post in January 2018 that President Trump referred to El Salvador, Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries.”
– A February 2018 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference where Trump “used MS-13…to disparage immigrants, indicating that they are criminals and comparing them to snakes.”
“The issues are at least serious enough to preserve the status quo,” he wrote.
The Justice Department said Chen’s decision “usurps the role of the executive branch” and vowed to fight his ruling in court.
“The Court contends that the duly elected President of the United States cannot be involved in matters deciding the safety and security of our nation’s citizens or in the enforcement of our immigration laws,” Justice spokesman Devin O’Malley said in a statement Wednesday night. “The Justice Department completely rejects the notion that the White House or the Department of Homeland Security did anything improper.”
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