A federal appeals court on Monday declined a request by United States President Donald Trump’s administration to permit it to revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, Haitians and Cubans living in the country.
The Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals refused to put on hold a judge’s order stopping the Department of Homeland Security’s move to cut short a 2-year “parole”; given to the migrants under former president, Joe Biden’s administration.
The action of the last administration, marked an expansion of the Trump’s hardline crackdown on United States’ immigration and push to increase the level of deportations.
The administration argued that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had discretion to categorically end the migrants’ status and that the judge’s order was forcing the US government to “retain hundreds of thousands of aliens in the country against its will.”;
However, a three-judge panel comprised entirely of appointees of Democratic presidents said Noem “has not at this point made a ‘strong showing’ that her categorical termination of plaintiffs’ parole is likely to be sustained on appeal.”;
Karen Tumlin, a lawyer whose immigrant rights group Justice Action Center pursued the case, welcomed the court’s decision.
She called the administration’s actions “reckless and illegal.”;
“The Trump administration is committed to restoring the rule of law to our immigration system,”; Tricia McLaughlin, the Homeland Security Department spokesperson, said in a statement.
“No lawsuit, not this one or any other, is going to stop us from doing that.”;
A lawsuit by immigrant rights advocates representing migrants challenged the agency decision to pause various Biden-era programs that have allowed Ukrainian, Afghan, Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan migrants to enter the country.
The Homeland Security Department had on March 25 announced in a Federal Register notice that it had decided to terminate the two-year parole granted to about 400,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelan migrants while the case was pending.
US District Judge Indira Talwani, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, which she said revoked previously granted parole and work authorisations for migrants on a categorical basis and without a necessary case-by-case review.
