Judge Extends Protections for Migrants From Nepal, Honduras and Nicaragua

In blocking the end of deportation protections for more than 60,000 migrants, the judge said the Trump administration’s language surrounding the program had strayed into racist conspiracy theories.

A federal judge blocked the Trump administration on Thursday from ending deportation protections for more than 60,000 migrants from Nepal, Honduras and Nicaragua, writing in a withering order that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had perpetuated xenophobic stereotypes and racist conspiracy theories in her drive to suspend their legal status.

The administration’s actions have amounted to asking migrants “to atone for their race, leave because of their names and purify their blood,” Judge Trina L. Thompson of the Northern District of California wrote. “The court disagrees.”

The administration is trying to end protections for Hondurans, Nicaraguans and Nepalis through a program known as Temporary Protected Status, which is intended to shield migrants from deportation if their home countries are facing natural disasters or conflict. The changes were set to go into effect in the coming weeks, but Judge Thompson blocked them at least until a hearing set for Nov. 18.

“By stereotyping the T.P.S. program and immigrants as invaders that are criminal, and by highlighting the need for migration management, Secretary Noem’s statements perpetuate the discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population,” she wrote.

“Color is neither a poison nor a crime,” she added.

Among other comments, Judge Thompson cited Ms. Noem’s reference to immigrants in a news interview as “some of the most dangerous people in the world” and her remarks that other countries were emptying “their prisons, their mental institutions” and sending those people to the United States.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Thursday night.

Judge Thompson’s order postponed any action by the department to immediately withdraw those protections, “to preserve the status quo” until the court could hear full arguments on the legality of the policy.

Efforts by the Trump administration to withdraw Temporary Protected Status from other groups, including Afghan and Haitian migrants, have run into fierce legal resistance, although the administration has secured a key victory at the Supreme Court, which allowed such protections to end for Venezuelans.

The Supreme Court, as is typical in rulings on emergency applications, gave no reasoning. But a number of lower court judges have expressed serious doubt about the administration’s motives. Several have noted that while the government has traditionally reviewed temporary status for certain groups to evaluate its necessity, no president has upended the lives of hundreds of thousands of migrants at once by seeking to bring the program to end.

The government had argued across several cases that any delay in enacting its plans undermined the country’s foreign policy and national interests, and that it was within the president’s authority to backtrack on immigration policy.

Ms. Noem has also proposed ending the status in cases where the government has determined the original disaster or conflict has been resolved. Republicans say that the program has strayed far beyond its original intent, turning what were meant to be temporary protections into essentially permanent ones.

But Judge Thompson, an appointee of Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., wrote that the potential harms to the United States as a whole greatly outweighed any inconvenience to the government in extending the protections.

She noted an estimated $1.4 billion loss to the economy if protections were terminated, as well as a substantial loss of tax revenue and Social Security and Medicare contributions.

Above all, postponing any termination of the program was necessary to keep families together and prevent individuals from being “wrongfully removed” on more humanist grounds, she wrote.

“The freedom to live fearlessly, the opportunity of liberty and the American dream,” she wrote. “That is all plaintiffs seek.”

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