A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s termination of deportation protections for Somalis on Friday, a few days before more than 1,000 people were set to lose their protected status.
TPS for Somalis, which allows them to live and work in the U.S., was set to expire on Tuesday. Under President Donald Trump, the Department of Homeland Security has sought to limit the protections, which are meant for immigrants fleeing countries hit by humanitarian crises.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs voided the termination for the time being, pointing out that the plaintiffs requested emergency intervention from the court fewer than 10 days before the effective date of the termination to which the Trump administration has not responded.
“The Court notes that the consequences of either granting or denying Plaintiffs’ motion to postpone the effective date of the termination would be weighty: Plaintiffs aver that if Somalia’s TPS designation is allowed to terminate, over one thousand people will face ‘a myriad of grave risks,’ including detention and deportation, physical violence if removed to Somalia, and forced separation from family members,” Burroughs wrote.
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DHS bashed the order in a statement later on Friday. “This stay by an Obama-appointed judge is just the latest example of judicial activists trying to prevent President Trump from restoring integrity to America’s legal immigration system,” a DHS spokesperson wrote.
DHS announced the decision to end the protected status designation for Somalia on Jan. 13. The U.S. first granted the protections to Somali immigrants 1991 because of the three-decades long civil war and natural disasters.
Two nonprofits that help African immigrants, African Communities Together and Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, and four anonymous Somalis with TPS sued the Trump administration over the decision.
Trump has zeroed in on Somali immigrants, targeting the diaspora in Minnesota, saying they have destroyed the country and contribute nothing.
“With Somalia, which is barely a country, you know, they have no, they have no anything,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on Dec. 2. “They just run around killing each other. There’s no structure.”
The decision from the Obama-appointed judge comes after the Trump administration requested the Supreme Court to greenlight its termination of TPS for Haitians and Syrians.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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