Judge Blocks Trump Administration From Ending Temporary Protected Status for Hundreds of Thousands of Immigrants

A federal judge in California granted a preliminary injunction Wednesday to temporarily halt the Trump administration’s efforts to revoke temporary protected status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Sudan, El Salvador, Haiti, and Nicaragua. The TPS status allows for the sheltering of immigrants from war- or disaster-torn countries, but President Trump has long characterized the program as unnecessary. In the Wednesday decision, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen wrote the government cannot end TPS protections for immigrants from those countries until the lawsuit has concluded. “Absent injunctive relief, TPS beneficiaries and their children indisputably will suffer irreparable harm and great hardship,” Chen wrote, according to a section of the decision tweeted by Politico reporter Ted Hesson. Chen later added: “In contrast, the government has failed to establish any real harm were the status quo [which has been in existence for as long as two decades] maintained during the pendency of this litigation.”