Federal judge blocks Trump admin from pulling Biden-era migrant protections
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President Trump at the White House on Wednesday. Photo: Chris Kleponis/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration on Wednesday from suspending Biden-era temporary migrant protections and ordered officials to resume applications.
Why it matters: The ruling that comes as the Trump administration is moving to escalate its hardline immigration crackdown affects thousands of people who came to the country legally via temporary programs from Afghanistan, Latin America and Ukraine.
Driving the news: President Trump in January ordered the Homeland Security Department to terminate Biden-era "parole" programs that allowed people from certain countries to temporarily live and work in the U.S. on humanitarian or public interest grounds.
- A lawsuit is challenging the suspension of processing applications for people from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
State of play: U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani in her order acknowledged that the Trump administration has broad discretion on immigration policy, but said it was not wholly shielded from judicial review.
- The judge in Boston, Massachusetts, made a similar order in April regarding people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela given temporary legal status under the CHNV Program. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene in that case.
- "This court emphasizes, as it did in its prior order, that it is not in the public interest to manufacture a circumstance in which hundreds of thousands of individuals will, over the course of several months, become unlawfully present in the country," Talwani said Wednesday.
- "[S]uch that these individuals cannot legally work in their communities or provide for themselves and their families."
What they're saying: "This ruling reaffirms what we have always known to be true: our government has a legal obligation to respect the rights of all humanitarian parole beneficiaries and the Americans who have welcomed them into their communities," Anwen Hughes, a lawyer for Human Rights First, which is representing plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement Wednesday.
The other side: "The Biden Administration abused the parole authority to allow millions of illegal aliens into the U.S. which further fueled the worst border crisis in U.S. history," DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement Thursday.
- "Under federal law, Secretary [Kristi] Noem — in support of the President — has full authority to cancel or modify these policies. Doing so is a promise kept to the American people to secure our borders and protect our national security. We have the law, the facts, and common sense on our side," McLaughlin added.
- Representatives for the DHS did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment on whether the administration would appeal the ruling.
- Attorneys for the Justice Department in its appeal to the Supreme Court on Talwani's April ruling said that order "blocks the Executive Branch from exercising its discretionary authority over a key aspect of the Nation's immigration and foreign policy and thwarts Congress's express vesting of that decision in the Secretary, not courts."
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