A lawsuit brought by two Los Angeles civil rights law firms, among others, which ultimately prevented the Trump administration from terminating humanitarian protected status for over 400,000 people, is expected to be dismissed Monday, it was announced Tuesday.
The plaintiffs in Ramos v. Mayorkas and a companion case, Bhattarai v. Mayorkas, challenged the Trump administration’s efforts in 2017 and 2018 to terminate Temporary Protected Status for individuals from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua and Sudan.
The class-action lawsuit filed in federal court in San Francisco against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2018 alleged that termination of the program would be “unlawful” and “motivated by racial animus.”
The suit was filed on behalf of six adults with protected status and two U.S. citizen children of TPS holders. The plaintiffs were represented by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, ACLU Foundation of Northern California, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and the law firm of Sidley Austin LLP.
The TPS program allows people from certain countries to lawfully live and work in the United States when they cannot safely return to their country of origin due to armed conflict, natural disaster or other circumstances.
A federal judge previously blocked the administration’s efforts to end the program for the 300,000 people from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan currently living in the U.S. under TPS, but the decision left out more than 100,000 immigrants from Honduras and Nepal.
The plaintiffs alleged that the Trump administration made the TPS termination decision in order to further the then-president’s “America First” policy. The lawsuit lists allegedly racist statements made by for President Donald Trump in reference to Latin American and South Asian countries and immigrants, including referring to immigrants as snakes and animals, mispronouncing Nepal as “nipple,” and faking an Indian accent in imitation of Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi.
The Trump administration argued that most countries in the TPS program have recovered from natural disasters or conflicts and that the status has outlived its need.
TPS holders and their U.S. citizen children announced the end to their six-year lawsuit Tuesday by filing a notice officially closing the case on Monday.
The plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction in 2018, which protected the legal status of all TPS holders for the past five years. An appellate order reversing the injunction was vacated by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last year.
“Had it not been stopped, the Trump administration would have ended humanitarian protection for over 98% of all people who held this status at the time of the announced terminations,” said Emi MacLean, counsel for plaintiffs and senior staff attorney for the ACLU Foundation of Northern California. “Instead, not a single person lost TPS as a result of the Trump administration’s racist and illegal actions.”
Last June, the Biden administration rescinded the Trump administration’s TPS terminations and extended TPS for more than 300,000 TPS holders from El Salvador, Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua. Earlier, the Biden administration re-designated Haiti and Sudan for TPS.
On Dec. 28, the federal district court dismissed Ramos as moot in light of the Biden administration’s “unequivocal” policy change which “fully addressed” plaintiffs’ objections by granting TPS status and/or rescinding the TPS terminations at issue, court papers show.
According to the ACLU, senior Trump advisors have said TPS would be terminated again should Trump be elected to a second term.