A federal judge on Thursday reportedly temporarily halted the Trump administration’s attempt to wind down long-standing deportation protections for tens of thousands of migrants from Central America and Asia — a move that once again pits the judiciary against efforts to reassert immigration enforcement authority.
Judge Trina Thompson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, a Biden appointee, ruled to extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for approximately 60,000 foreign nationals from Honduras, Nicaragua, and Nepal.
Her sweeping decision delays a policy recalibration by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who determined that protected status was no longer justified for migrants whose home countries had long since recovered from earlier disasters.
Thompson’s opinion went well beyond legal reasoning, suggesting racial motives behind the Trump administration’s enforcement action. “The freedom to live fearlessly, the opportunity of liberty, and the American dream. That is all Plaintiffs seek,” she wrote. “Instead, they are told to atone for their race, leave because of their names, and purify their blood. The Court disagrees.”
The ruling prolongs a legal and political battle over a program created by the Immigration Act of 1990 to provide temporary reprieve from deportation for nationals of countries suffering from armed conflict or natural disaster. But critics have long argued that TPS has drifted far from its original intent.
“TPS was never intended to be a de facto asylum program, yet it has been abused as one for decades,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin earlier this month, following a legal win allowing the administration to proceed with ending TPS for nationals of Afghanistan and Cameroon.
The Trump administration had also moved to terminate protections for Venezuela, Haiti, and Ukraine — part of a broader effort to reestablish the rule of law in an immigration system that has frequently blurred the line between legal and unlawful presence.
The migrants currently covered by Thursday’s ruling have long outlasted the emergencies that prompted their initial TPS designations.
Hondurans and Nicaraguans received the status in 1999 after Hurricane Mitch. Nepalese nationals were added in 2015 after an earthquake.
Yet over two decades later, their protections have been repeatedly extended, creating what amounts to a shadow amnesty.
Secretary Noem declared earlier this summer that Nicaragua and Honduras had made “significant progress” since the storm, pointing to growing tourism and economic development as indicators that deportation relief was no longer warranted.
Still, with the judiciary again stepping in to preserve programs Congress labeled “temporary,” questions remain about who sets immigration policy in the United States — elected officials or lifetime-appointed judges.
Thompson’s ruling pushes the decision off until at least November 18, when the next hearing is scheduled. Whether that results in a permanent injunction or marks the beginning of a broader rollback of TPS under a returning Trump administration remains to be seen.
For now, efforts to restore immigration integrity remain, once again, entangled in courtroom delays.
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