Federal judge blocks Trump administration from ending protections for immigrants

On Wednesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ending legal protections for more than 300,000 immigrants.
The immigrants, from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Sudan, and Haiti, have Temporary Protected Status (TPS), given to people who flee their home countries due to natural disasters and conflicts. The Trump administration claimed that the conditions that forced them to leave their home countries are no longer present, but U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen ruled that the recipients and their children will "indisputably" suffer if they lose their status.
Many of the recipients have lived in the United States for decades, and if they have children who were born in the U.S., they would be forced to choose between leaving them or "tearing them away from the only country and community they have known," Chen wrote. El Salvador has the most TPS beneficiaries, and they were scheduled to lose their designation in September 2019, while 1,000 people from Sudan were supposed to be dropped from the program in less than a month.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
-
ICE builds detention camps and ramps up arrests
Feature The Trump administration's deportation efforts continue
-
Trump executive order targets homeless
Speed Read It will now be easier for states and cities to remove homeless people from the streets
-
Columbia pays $200M to settle with White House
Speed Read The Trump administration accused the school of failing to protect its Jewish students amid pro-Palestinian protests
-
Florida judge and DOJ make Epstein trouble for Trump
Speed Read The Trump administration's request to release grand jury transcripts from the Epstein investigation was denied
-
Trump attacks Obama as Epstein furor mounts
Speed Read The Trump administration accused the Obama administration of 'treasonous' behavior during the 2016 election
-
Deportations: The growing backlash
Feature New poll numbers show declining support for Trump's deportation crackdown
-
Trump administration releases MLK files
Speed Read Newly released documents on the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did not hold any new revelations, King historians said
-
Are we facing a summer of riots?
Today's Big Question Anti-immigrant unrest in Essex has sparked fears of a summer of disorder