A Federal Court of Appeals of San Francisco left in force on Friday the order of a lower court that prevents the government of President Trump from ending the temporal legal protections of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, international news agencies reported.
The panel of three judges of the Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit of the United States denied the request of the National Security Department to establish an emergency suspension while the authorities appeal.
For this decision, the Court considered that the government “has not shown that it will suffer irreparable damage in the absence of a suspension.”
Last March, the federal district judge, Edward Chen, determined that the Secretary of National Security, Kristi Noem, illegally revoked the protections granted by the Joe Biden government that allow some 350 thousand Venezuelans to live and work in the United States. These temporal protections would expire earlier this April.
Likewise, Noem announced the end of the temporary protection status (TPS) for about 250 thousand Venezuelans in September and for 500 thousand Haitians, whose TPS protections would expire in August.
The lawyers of the Department of Justice representing the Government argue that Congress granted the secretary a clear and broad authority on the TPS program and that decisions are not subject to judicial review.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne4Hrxpmq8e
Origin of TPS
Congress created TPS in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries that suffer from natural disasters or civil conflicts.
The program authorizes that people live and work in the United States in increases of up to 18 months if the Secretary of National Security considers that the conditions in their nations of origin are insecure to return.
Chen arguments
When blocking the administration, Chen said that hundreds of thousands of people, their families and livelihoods were at risk of a serious disturbance, as well as the health of communities throughout the country and the billions of dollars in economic activity generated by Venezuelan workers.
He pointed out that the Government failed to identify any “real damage that contrasts to continue the TPS for Venezuelan beneficiaries.”
He added that the plaintiffs may probably be successfully demonstrated that Noem’s actions “are not authorized by law, are arbitrary and capricious, and are motivated by unconstitutional animosity.”
Chen found that government’s arguments are not convincing and said that the many derogatory and false comments of Noem and Trump, in which they label Venezuelans as criminals, show that racial animosity was a motivator to cancel protections.
“‘Act based on a negative group stereotype and generalize this stereotype to the entire group is the classic example of racism,” Chen wrote.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy6a8wj2t0
Trump vs. The Judiciary
For his part, the US president, Donald Trump, said Thursday that he does not understand how the courts can question their authority on migratory issues.
The president’s reaction survived after a federal judge said that the Government consciously disobeyed an order to block a controversial expulsion of migrants to El Salvador.
“I do not understand how the judges can take that authority from a president. We have done a hallucinating job,” Trump said during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House with the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni.
“No one can believe the work we have done. It is much better than we promised,” he said then after praising the work of his Secretary of National Security, Kristi Noem, and his border executor, Tom Homan.
On Wednesday, federal judge James Boasberg began the process to declare the government in contempt for ignoring a court order of his and having sent more than 200 migrants, mostly Venezuelans, to a high security prison in El Salvador on March 15.
