protections

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has ruled for a second time that the Trump administration may cancel the “temporary protected status” given to about 600,000 Venezuelans under the Biden administration.

The move, advocates for the Venezuelans said, means thousands of lawfully present individuals could lose their jobs, be detained in immigration facilities and deported to a country that the U.S. government considers unsafe to visit.

The high court granted an emergency appeal from Trump’s lawyers and set aside decisions of U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Although the posture of the case has changed, the parties’ legal arguments and relative harms generally have not. The same result that we reached in May is appropriate here,” the court said in an unsigned order Friday.

Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have denied the appeal.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. “I view today’s decision as yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket,” she wrote. “Because, respectfully, I cannot abide our repeated, gratuitous, and harmful interference with cases pending in the lower courts while lives hang in the balance, I dissent.”

Last month, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had overstepped her legal authority by canceling the legal protection.

Her decision “threw the future of these Venezuelan citizens into disarray and exposed them to substantial risk of wrongful removal, separation from their families and loss of employment,” the panel wrote.

But Trump’s lawyers said the law bars judges from reviewing these decisions by U.S. immigration officials.

Homeland Security applauded the Supreme Court’s action. “Temporary Protected Status was always supposed to be just that: Temporary,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “Yet, previous administrations abused, exploited, and mangled TPS into a de facto amnesty program.”

Congress authorized this protected status for people who are already in the United States but cannot return home because their native countries are not safe.

The Biden administration offered the protections to Venezuelans because of the political and economic collapse brought about by the authoritarian regime of Nicolás Maduro.

Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security secretary under Biden, granted the protected status to groups of Venezuelans in 2021 and 2023, totaling about 607,000 people.

Mayorkas extended it again in January, three days before Trump was sworn in. That same month, Noem decided to reverse the extension, which was set to expire for both groups of Venezuelans in October 2026.

Shortly afterward, Noem announced the termination of protections for the 2023 group by April.

In March, Chen issued an order temporarily pausing Noem’s repeal, which the Supreme Court set aside in May with only Jackson in dissent.

The San Francisco judge then held a hearing on the issue and concluded Noem’s repeal violated the Administrative Procedure Act because it was arbitrary and and not justified.

He said his earlier order imposing a temporary pause did not prevent him from ruling on the legality of the repeal, and the 9th Circuit agreed.

The approximately 350,000 Venezuelans who had TPS through the 2023 designation saw their legal status restored. Many reapplied for work authorization, said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, and a counsel for the plaintiffs.

In the meantime, Noem announced the cancellation of the 2021 designation, effective Nov. 7.

Trump’s solicitor general, D. John Sauer, went back to the Supreme Court in September and urged the justices to set aside the second order from Chen.

“This case is familiar to the Court and involves the increasingly familiar and untenable phenomenon of lower courts disregarding this Court’s orders on the emergency docket,” he said.

The Supreme Court’s decision once again reverses the legal status of the 2023 group and cements the end of legal protections for the 2021 group next month.

In a further complication, the Supreme Court’s previous decision said that anyone who had already received documents verifying their TPS status or employment authorization through next year is entitled to keep it.

That, Arulanantham said, “creates another totally bizarre situation, where there are some people who will have TPS through October 2026 as they’re supposed to because the Supreme Court says if you already got a document it can’t be canceled. Which to me just underscores how arbitrary and irrational the whole situation is.”

Advocates for the Venezuelans said the Trump administration has failed to show that their presence in the U.S. is an emergency requiring immediate court relief.

In a brief filed Monday, attorneys for the National TPS Alliance argued the Supreme Court should deny the Trump administration’s request because Homeland Security officials acted outside the scope of their authority by revoking the TPS protections early.

“Stripping the lawful immigration status of 600,000 people on 60 days’ notice is unprecedented,” Jessica Bansal, an attorney representing the Los Angeles-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network, wrote in a statement. “Doing it after promising an additional 18 months protection is illegal.”

The Japanese government has granted more protections to same-sex couples.

According to The Japan Times, the government have decided to recognise same-sex couples as being in “de facto marriages” under nine more laws, including the Disaster Condolence Grant law.

The recent development comes months after the government determined that 24 laws – including the Domestic Violence Prevention Act, Land and House Lease Act, Child Abuse Prevention Act, and Public Housing Act – would apply to same-sex couples, per asahi.com.

Over the last few years, the local LGBTQIA+ community in Japan have been embroiled in a battle for marriage equality.

Currently, the country’s constitution defines marriage as “mutual consent between both sexes” and doesn’t recognise marriage equality.

In March 2021, the Sapporo District Court ruled that the government’s refusal to recognise same-sex marriage was unconstitutional under Article 14 of the Japanese constitution, which bans discrimination based on “race, creed, sex, social status or family origin.”

While the historic ruling offered a sign of hope for LGBTQIA+ equality, the community was hit with a major setback the following year.

In June 2022, a district court in Osaka ruled against three LGBTQ+ couples and their call for same-sex marriage.

“From the perspective of individual dignity, it can be said that it is necessary to realise the benefits of same-sex couples being publicly recognised through official recognition,” the court said on 20 June.

“Public debate on what kind of system is appropriate for this has not been thoroughly carried out.”

A few months later, a Tokyo court upheld the aforementioned ruling. 

However, despite the court doubling down on its stance, the presiding judge also stated that the lack of a legal system and protections for same-sex couples infringes on their human rights (per CNN). 

While the marriage equality movement in Japan has suffered a handful of setbacks, it has also seen a few notable wins over the last three years.

In May 2023, the Japanese government faced renewed pressure when the Nagoya District Court ruled the country’s same-sex marriage ban as unconstitutional.

Then, in 2024, the Tokyo High Court and the Sapporo High Court issued separate rulings marking the ban as unconstitutional.

Lastly, Japan’s Osaka High Court and Nagoya High Court delivered similar decisions in March 2025.

This is a developing story. 

US President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan has no guarantees to protect Palestinians but does guarantee a “long-term occupation by foreign troops,” says Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said Monday it will decide on reversing a 90-year precedent that has protected independent agencies from direct control by the president.

The court’s conservative majority has already upheld President Trump’s firing of Democratic appointees at the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board. And in a separate order on Monday, it upheld Trump’s removal of a Democratic appointee at the Federal Trade Commission.

Those orders signal the court is likely to rule for the president and that he has the full authority to fire officials at independent agencies, if Congress said they had fixed terms.

The only hint of doubt has focused on the Federal Reserve Board. In May, when the court upheld the firing of an NLRB official, it said it decision does not threaten the independence of Federal Reserve.

The court described it as “a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States.” Trump did not share that view. He threatened to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell during the summer because he had not lowered interest rates.

And he is now seeking to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, a Biden appointee, based on the allegation she may have committed mortgage fraud when she took out two home loans in 2021.

Trump’s lawyers sent an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court last week seeking to have Cook removed now.

Long before Trump’s presidency, Chief Justice John G. Roberts had argued that the president has the constitutional power to control federal agencies and to hire or fire all officials who exercise significant executive authority.

But that view stands in conflict with what the court has said for more than a century. Since 1887, when Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroad rates, lawmakers on Capitol Hill believed they had the authority to create independent boards and commissions.

Typically, the president would be authorized appoint officials who would serve a fixed term set by law. At times, Congress also required the boards have a mix of both Republican and Democratic appointees.

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld that understanding in a 1935 case called Humphrey’s Executor. The justices said then these officials made judicial-type decisions, and they should be shielded from direct control by the president.

That decision was a defeat for President Franklin Roosevelt who tried to fire a Republican appointee on the Federal Trade Commission.

In recent years, the chief justice and his conservative colleagues have questioned the idea that Congress can shield officials from direct control by the president.

In Monday’s order, the court said it will hear arguments in December on “whether the statutory removal protections for members of the Federal Trade Commission violate the separation of powers and, if so, whether Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U. S. 602 (1935), should be overruled.”

Justice Elena Kagan has repeatedly dissented in these cases and argued that Congress has the power to make the law and structure the government, not the president.

Joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, she objected on Monday that the court has continued to fire independent officials at Trump’s request.

“Our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars,” she wrote. “Still more, it should not be used, as it also has been, to transfer government authority from Congress to the President, and thus to reshape the Nation’s separation of powers.”

A federal judge ruled that terminating Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans violates laws on government conduct.

The United States government has, for a second time, asked the Supreme Court to issue an emergency order allowing it to strip legal protections from more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants.

The Department of Justice on Friday submitted an emergency application asking the nation’s top court to overturn a federal judge’s ruling that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did not have the authority to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for the migrants.

“So long as the district court’s order is in effect, the Secretary must permit over 300,000 Venezuelan nationals to remain in the country, notwithstanding her reasoned determination that doing so even temporarily is ‘contrary to the national interest’,” the Justice Department argued in its filing to the court.

In May, the Supreme Court sided with the Donald Trump White House, overturning a temporary order from US District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco that had blocked the termination of TPS while the case moved through the courts.

On September 5, Chen issued his final ruling, concluding that Secretary Noem’s decision violated a federal law regulating the conduct of government agencies.

“This case is familiar to the court and involves the increasingly familiar and untenable phenomenon of lower courts disregarding this court’s orders on the emergency docket,” the Justice Department told the Supreme Court.

“This court’s orders are binding on litigants and lower courts. Whether those orders span one sentence or many pages, disregarding them – as the lower courts did here – is unacceptable.”

Millions of people have fled Venezuela in recent years due to political repression and a crippling economic crisis spurred in part by US sanctions against the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

Before leaving office, the administration of former US President Joe Biden had extended TPS for about 600,000 Venezuelans through October 2026.

TPS, created by the US Congress in 1990, grants people living in the US relief from deportation if their home country is affected by extraordinary circumstances such as armed conflict or environmental disasters.

An individual who is granted TPS cannot be deported, can obtain an employment authorisation document and may be given travel authorisation. A TPS holder cannot be detained by the US over their immigration status.

Sept. 5 (UPI) — A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration for now from ending Temporary Protected Status for more than 1.1 million migrants from Venezuela and Haiti.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco ruled that the change unlawfully “truncated and condensed” the timeline to end temporary legal protections and work permits for people who fled the two Latin American nations. He was appointed by President Barack Obama.

About 600,000 Venezuelans had their protections expire in April or on Sept. 10. They have fled political unrest, mass unemployment and hunger since receiving their protected status in 2021. The ruling affects 500,000 from Haiti.

The Department of Homeland Security has attempted to end the status for several countries. Separate litigation is ongoing for migrants from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua.

“This case arose from action taken post haste by the current DHS Secretary, Kristi Noem, to revoke the legal status of Venezuelan and Haitian TPS holders, sending them back to conditions that are so dangerous that even the State Department advises against travel to their home countries,” Chen wrote in a 69-page decision. “The Secretary’s action in revoking TPS was not only unprecedented in the manner and speed in which it was taken but also violates the law.”

The decision only temporarily halted the agency from deporting them. But Chen said he expects Venezuelans will be able to renew this status while the case goes through the courts, including appeals, and ultimately the Supreme Court.

Earlier, he halted a TPS order for several hundred thousand Venezuelans. But the Supreme Court in May allowed the Trump administration to end the program as it goes through the courts.

Chen said his new decision concerned only preliminary relief, and the high court didn’t bar him from deciding on the case based upon its merits under the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs the rule-making process of the agency.

In planning to appeal, Noem said the government will “use every legal option at the Department’s disposal to end this chaos and prioritize the safety of Americans.”

“For decades the TPS program has been abused, exploited, and politicized as a de facto amnesty program. Its use has been all the more dangerous given the millions of unvetted illegal aliens the Biden Administration let into this country,” the statement obtained by CBS News read.

The Trump administration has argued that conditions in Venezuela and Haiti have improved sufficiently to end those protections.

TPS was established in 1990 to allow for temporary immigrant protections for people experiencing wars, natural disasters or other “extraordinary” conditions.

“For 35 years, the TPS statute has been faithfully executed by presidential administrations from both parties, affording relief based on the best available information obtained by the Department of Homeland Security,” Chen wrote. “This case arose from action taken post haste by the current DHS Secretary, Kristi Noem, to revoke the legal status of Venezuelan and Haitian TPS holders, sending them back to conditions that are so dangerous that even the State Department advises against travel to their home countries.”

When Donald Trump was president during his first term, he attempted to end TPS for several countries, including Haiti. Court cases were blocked during his presidency.

When Joe Biden was president, he designated Venezuela as part of TPS, covering 600,000 migrants. It was expanded to Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti and Ukraine.

Haiti was first designated the protection after the magnitude 7.0 earthquake in 2010. The nation faces widespread hunger and gang violence.

Two years later in 2023, he extended protections for those from Venezuela and Haiti.

When Trump became president again in January, Noem sought to reverse the extension for Venezuela and then sought to terminate the designation entirely. Haitians also were included, as well as those from other countries.

“As a matter of law, the Secretary lacked the implicit authority to vacate,” Chen wrote. “Even if she had such authority, there is no genuine dispute that she exceeded that authority.”

The National TPS Alliance and Venezuelan TPS holders in February challenged Noem’s decisions.

“From Day 1, Secretary Noem acted with a sole intent of stripping TPS-holders of their legal status whether or not there was a basis for it,” Emi MacLean, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in Northern California, which represented the plaintiffs, said in a statement to The Washington Post. “This decision recognizes the illegality of that. As a result, TPS protections should go back into effect immediately.”

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from ending temporary legal protections that have granted more than 1 million people from Haiti and Venezuela the right to live and work in the United States.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco for the plaintiffs means 600,000 Venezuelans whose temporary protections expired in April or whose protections were about to expire Sept. 10 have status to stay and work in the United States. It also keeps protections for about 500,000 Haitians.

Chen scolded Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for revoking protections for Venezuelans and Haitians that the judge said would send them “back to conditions that are so dangerous that even the State Department advises against travel to their home countries.”

He said Noem’s actions were arbitrary and capricious, and she exceeded her authority in ending protections that were extended three times by the Biden administration.

Presidential administrations have executed the law for 35 years based on the best available information and in consultation with other agencies, “a process that involves careful study and analysis. Until now,” Chen wrote.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Temporary Protected Status is a designation that can be granted by the Homeland Security secretary to people in the United States, if conditions in their homelands are deemed unsafe for return due to a natural disaster, political instability or other dangerous conditions.

Millions of Venezuelans have fled political unrest, mass unemployment and hunger. The country is mired in a prolonged crisis brought on by years of hyperinflation, political corruption, economic mismanagement and an ineffectual government.

Haiti was first designated for TPS in 2010 after a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 earthquake killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of people, and left more than 1 million homeless. Haitians face widespread hunger and gang violence.

Their designations were to expire in September but later extended until February, due to a separate court order out of New York.

Noem said that conditions in both Haiti and Venezuela had improved and that it was not in the national interest to allow migrants from the countries to stay on for what is a temporary program. Attorneys for the government have said the secretary’s clear and broad authority to make determinations related to the TPS program are not subject to judicial review.

Designations are granted for terms of six, twelve or 18 months, and extensions can be granted so long as conditions remain dire. The status prevents holders from being deported and allows them to work.

The secretary’s action in revoking TPS was not only unprecedented in the manner and speed in which it was taken but also violated the law, Chen wrote.

The case has had numerous legal twists, including an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. In March, Chen temporarily paused the administration’s plans to end TPS for people from Venezuela. An estimated 350,000 Venezuelans were set to lose protections the following month.

The U.S. Supreme Court in May reversed his order while the lawsuit played out. The justices provided no rationale, which is common in emergency appeals, and did not rule on the merits of the case.

Venezuelans with expired protections were fired from jobs, separated from children, detained by officers and even deported, lawyers for TPS holders said.

The Supreme Court’s reversal does not apply to Friday’s ruling. The government is expected to seek a stay of Chen’s order as it appeals.

Last week, a three-judge appeals panel also sided with plaintiffs, saying the Republican administration did not have the authority to vacate protection extensions granted by the previous administration.

Har writes for the Associated Press.

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court on Friday blocked President Trump’s plans to end protections for 600,000 people from Venezuela who have had permission to live and work in the United States, saying that plaintiffs are likely to win their claim that the Republican administration’s actions were unlawful.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court ruling that maintained temporary protected status designations for Venezuelans while they challenge actions by the Trump administration in court.

The 9th Circuit judges found that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had no authority to vacate or set aside a prior extension of temporary protected status because the governing statute written by Congress does not permit it.

Then-President Biden’s Democratic administration had extended temporary protected status, commonly known as TPS, for people from Venezuela.

“In enacting the TPS statute, Congress designed a system of temporary status that was predictable, dependable, and insulated from electoral politics,” Judge Kim Wardlaw, who was nominated by President Clinton, a Democrat, wrote for the panel. The other two judges on the panel were also nominated by Democratic presidents.

In an email, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security blasted the decision as more obstruction from “unelected activist” judges.

“For decades the TPS program has been abused, exploited, and politicized as a de facto amnesty program,” the email read. “While this injunction delays justice and undermines the integrity of our immigration system, Secretary Noem will use every legal option at the Department’s disposal to end this chaos and prioritize the safety of Americans.”

Congress authorized temporary protected status, or TPS, as part of the Immigration Act of 1990. It allows the secretary of DHS to grant legal immigration status to people fleeing countries experiencing civil strife, environmental disaster or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions” that prevent a safe return to that home country. The terms are for six, 12 and 18 months.

The appellate judges said the guaranteed time limitations were critical so people could gain employment, find long-term housing and build stability without fear of shifting political winds.

But in ending the protections soon after Trump took office, Noem said conditions in Venezuela had improved and it was not in the U.S. national interest to allow migrants from there to stay on for what is a temporary program. It’s part of a broader move by Trump’s administration to reduce the number of immigrants who are in the country either without legal documentation or through legal temporary programs.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco found in March that plaintiffs were likely to prevail on their claim that the administration had overstepped its authority in terminating the protections. Chen postponed the terminations, but the Supreme Court reversed him without explanation, which is common in emergency appeals.

It is unclear what effect Friday’s ruling will have on the estimated 350,000 Venezuelans in the group of 600,000 whose protections expired in April. Their lawyers say some have already been fired from jobs, detained in immigration jails, separated from their U.S. citizen children and even deported.

Protections for the remaining 250,000 Venezuelans are set to expire Sept. 10.

“What is really significant now is that the second court unanimously recognized that the trial court got it right,” said Emi MacLean, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Northern California representing plaintiffs.

She added that while the decision might not benefit immediately those people who have already lost their status or are about to lose their status, Friday’s ruling “should provide a path for the administration’s illegal actions related to Venezuela and TPS to finally be undone.”

A court declaration provided by plaintiffs showed the turmoil caused by the Trump administration and Supreme Court decision.

A Washington woman who worked in restaurants was deported in June along with her daughters, 10 years and 15 months old, after ICE officers told her to bring her children to an immigration check-in. The father of the baby, who is a U.S. citizen, remains in the U.S. while the woman tries to figure out what to do.

Also in June, a FedEx employee appeared in uniform at his required immigration check-in only to be detained, the court declaration states. He slept for about two weeks on a floor, terrified he would be sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison. His wife cannot maintain the household on her earnings.

“I am not a criminal,” he said in the declaration, adding that “immigrants like myself come to the United States to work hard and contribute, and instead our families and lives are being torn apart.”

Millions of Venezuelans have fled political unrest, mass unemployment and hunger. Their country is mired in a prolonged crisis brought on by years of hyperinflation, political corruption, economic mismanagement and an ineffectual government.

Attorneys for the U.S. government argued the Homeland Security secretary’s clear and broad authority to make determinations related to the TPS program were not subject to judicial review. They also denied that Noem’s actions were motivated by racial animus.

But the appellate judges said courts clearly had jurisdiction in cases where the actions were unlawful. They declined to address whether Noem was motivated by racial animus.

Har writes for the Associated Press.

Appeals court pauses an order that had protected status for Nepalese, Hondurans and Nicaraguans.

A United States appeals court has sided with the Trump administration and halted, for now, a lower court’s order that had kept in place temporary protections for 60,000 migrants from Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal.

In a decision issued on Wednesday, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco granted an emergency stay pending an appeal. Immigrant rights advocates allege that the administration acted unlawfully in ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations for people from Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal.

This decision means that the Republican administration can move towards removing an estimated 7,000 people from Nepal whose TPS designations expired on August 5. The TPS designations and legal status of 51,000 Hondurans and 3,000 Nicaraguans are set to expire September 8, at which point they will become eligible for removal.

“The district court’s order granting plaintiffs’ motion to postpone, entered July 31, 2025, is stayed pending further order of this court,” wrote the judges.

In July, a district judge ordered that the termination of the TPS be halted until November, when a hearing on the merits is scheduled. In her ruling, she found that the plaintiffs would suffer “irreparable harm” by the hasty termination, but also noted that the broader public would be impacted both economically and socially by the loss to the labour force and community.

The brief decision issued on Wednesday did not give a reason, and in a statement, UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy co-director Ahilan Arulanantham said there appeared to be a lack of due process.

“The court’s failure to provide any reasoning for its decision, including why this was an ‘emergency,’ falls far short of what due process requires and our clients deserve.”

TPS allows nationals from countries facing conflict, natural disaster or other extraordinary circumstances to temporarily remain in the US. It also gives them the right to work and travel.

The Trump administration has aggressively sought to remove the protection, thus making more people eligible for removal. It is part of a wider effort by the administration to carry out mass deportations of immigrants.

Since taking office, the administration has sought to remove protections for Afghans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Cameroonians – despite troubling conditions in their home countries.

Los Angeles public schools are opening Thursday for the new academic year confronting an intense and historically unique moment: They will be operating in opposition to the federal government’s immigration raids and have set in motion aggressive moves to protect children and their immigrant parents.

School police and officers from several municipal forces will patrol near some 100 schools, setting up “safe zones” in heavily Latino neighborhoods, with a special concentration at high schools where older Latino students are walking to campus. Bus routes are being changed to better serve areas with immigrant families so children can get to school with less exposure to immigration agents.

Community volunteers will join district staff and contractors to serve as scouts — alerting campuses of nearby enforcement actions so schools can be locked down as warranted and parents and others in the school community can be quickly notified via email and text.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass spoke about “how profound this moment is in U.S. history” during a Monday news conference with local officials.

“Here you have an entire array of elected officials, appointed officials, education leaders, people committed to our children, and we are gathered here today to talk about protecting our children from the federal government,” Bass said.

L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho said recently that the nation’s second-largest school system will oppose “any entity, at any level, that seeks to interfere with the educational process of our children. We are standing on the right side of the Constitution, and years from now, I guarantee you, we will have stood on the right side of history. We know that.”

High school boy mistakenly handcuffed

The worries among school officials and parents are not without cause.

On Monday federal agents reportedly drew their guns on a 15-year-old boy and handcuffed him outside Arleta High School. The confrontation ended with de-escalation. Family members persuaded federal agents that the boy — who is disabled — was not the person they were looking for, Carvalho said.

The situation was largely resolved by the time the school principal realized what was going on and rushed out to assist. School police also arrived and scooped up unspent bullets dropped on the ground by the agents, Carvalho said.

A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Tuesday that Arleta High was not being targeted. Instead agents were conducting “a targeted operation” on a “criminal illegal alien,” they described as “a Salvadoran national and suspected MS-13 pledge with prior criminal convictions in the broader vicinity of Arleta.”

At a Tuesday White House briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, responded to a question that referenced the L.A. Times reporting about the incident.

“I’ll have to look into the veracity of that report,” Leavitt said. “I read the L.A. Times almost every single day, and they are notorious for misleading the public… This administration wants to ensure that all school children across the country, in every city, from Los Angeles to D.C., can go to school safely.”

LAUSD will oppose “any entity, at any level, that seeks to interfere with the educational process of our children,” said Supt. Alberto Carvalho recently.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

School communities in fear

The incident outside Arleta High is among the ongoing confrontations across the region that have provoked public protests and prompted the Trump administration in June to deploy troops to Los Angeles. Enforcement actions have included masked agents arresting people at parking lots, in parks, on sidewalks and next to bus stops.

Litigation, including a temporary restraining order, appears to have slowed down local immigration raids, but federal officials have strongly affirmed that they have not stopped.

Trump administration policy is that no location — including a school — is off limits for enforcement actions in his drive to deport at least 1 million immigrants a year.

“People in our country illegally can self-deport the easy way, or they can get deported the hard way. And that’s not pleasant,” Trump said in a video posted to a White House social account.

“A big part of it is to create the sense of fear so people will self-deport,” said Jimmy Gomez, a Trump critic and Democratic member of Congress representing Los Angeles.

The ripple effect is that school communities are experiencing fear and trauma, worried that agents will descend on or near campuses.

Most in the state’s public school systems, including in L.A. Unified have embraced a counter mission, protecting the right of children — regardless of immigration status — to a public education. That right to an education is, so far, protected by past U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

For most school officials up and down the state, a necessary corollary to that right is safeguarding students’ guardians and close relatives.

On Tuesday, 30 school board members from L.A. County — which has 80 school districts — convened in Hawthorne to emphasize their own focus on protecting immigrant families.

“We’re about to welcome students back to schools, but we’re very concerned that these fears and anxieties may potentially have an impact for students not wanting to come back,” said Lynwood Unified school board member Alma Castro, an organizer of the event.

She called her district a “safe haven.” Among other measures, her district has trained staff to “restrict the sharing of any student files, any student information, and there’s been some work with thinking about our facilities to ensure that we have campuses that are closed off, that people can’t just walk in.”

L.A. Unified, along with other school districts, has embraced a mission to protect the right of children — regardless of immigration status — to a public education.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

Protecting immigrant families

L.A. Unified, with about 400,000 students, has been layering on protections for months, recently working to incorporate ideas advocated by the teachers union and immigrant-rights groups.

A major ongoing effort is building safe-passage networks one, two and three blocks out from a campus. Participants include paid outside groups, district employees and volunteer activists. School police — though diminished in numbers due to staffing cuts — are to patrol sensitive areas and are on call to move quickly to where situations arise. Some anti-police activists want the protective mission accomplished without any role for school police.

A safe-passage presence has expanded from 40 schools last year to at least 100 this year, among about 1,000 campuses total, Carvalho said.

“It is virtually impossible, considering the size of our community, to ensure that we have one caring, compassionate individual in every street corner in every street,” Carvalho said. “But we are deploying resources at a level never before seen in our district.”

Other various efforts include:

• Starting a task force to coordinate safe passage zones with local cities
• Setting up a donor-supported compassion fund to help families with legal and other costs
• Coordinating food aid for families in hiding
• Providing legal referrals
• Contacting more than 10,000 families to encourage them to send children to schools
• Providing information about online schooling options
• Distributing a “family preparedness” guide

Carvalho and leaders of other school districts reiterated that K-12 campuses and anything related to schooling, such as a school bus or a graduation ceremony, will be off limits to immigration agents unless they have a valid judicial warrant for a specific individual — which has been rare.

“We do not know what the enrollment will be like,” Carvalho said. “We know many parents may have already left our community. They may have self-deported… We hope that through our communication efforts, our awareness efforts, information and the direct counseling with students and parents, that we’ll be able to provide stable attendance for kids in our community.”

Reason to be afraid

Mary, a Los Angeles mother of three without legal status, was terrified, but more or less knew what to do when immigration agents came to her door twice in May for a “wellness check” on her children: She did not let them in to her home. She did not step outside.

And, eventually, the agents — at least eight of them who arrived with at least three vehicles — left.

Mary had learned about what to do in this situation from her Los Angeles public school.

Mary, who requested that her full name not be used, has three children, one of whom attends an Alliance College-Ready charter school, a network of 26 privately operated public schools.

Like L.A. Unified, Alliance has trained staff on the legal rights of immigrants and also trained parents about how to handle encounters with immigration agents and where to go for help.

Alliance largely serves low-income, Latino communities and the immigration raids affected attendance in the school last year. Normally, attendance runs about 90% at the end of their school year. This June, average daily attendance at 14 Alliance high schools had dipped below 80%. Six fell below 70% and one dropped as low as 57.5%.

Alliance also attempted to gather deportation data. Nine families responded in a school network that enrolls about 13,000. In two cases, students were deported; three other students had family members deported; one student and a sibling were in a family that self-deported; one student was detained; two families reported facing deportation proceedings.

While these numbers are small, the reports are more than enough to heighten fear within the community. And some families may have declined to be candid about their circumstances.

“What’s happening now is that no one is safe anywhere, not even in your home, at work, outside, taking a stroll,” L.A. school board member Rocio Rivas said in an interview.

Still, Rivas is encouraging families to send children to school, which she considers safer than other places.

Alliance is focusing heavily on mental-health support and also arranging carpools to and from school — in which the driver is a U.S. citizen, said Omar Reyes, a superintendent of instruction at the Alliance charter group.

Carvalho, a onetime undocumented immigrant himself, said that students deserve a traditional and joyous first day followed by a school year without trauma.

Children, he said, “inherently deserve dignity, humanity, love, empathy, compassion and great education.

Times staff writer Andrea Castillo contributed to this report.

Los Angeles Unified school police, staff and community volunteers will form protective perimeters around at least 100 schools when classes begin Thursday to help ensure the safe passage of children — an announcement that came on a day that immigration agents reportedly handcuffed, detained and drew their guns on a student outside Arleta High School in a case of mistaken identity, officials said.

The 15-year-old boy, a student with disabilities, was visiting Arleta High School with family members when federal agents detained him, L.A. Unified officials said. Family members intervened and, after a few tense moments, the agents released the boy. The school’s principal also came out to assess the situation. Agents left behind some bullets on the sidewalk, apparently by mistake, which were collected by school police.

“Such actions — violently detaining a child just outside a public school — are absolutely reprehensible and should have no place in our country,” school board member Kelly Gonez, who represents Arleta High, said in a social media post.

A spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security could not immediately be reached for comment.

Across Los Angeles Unified, parents, teachers and staff have expressed deep fears about school safety amid immigration raids. Citywide, leaders are concerned that children whose parents are living in the country without legal status will be kept home as families grapple with the climate of fear.

L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho spoke Monday at a news conference near district headquarters, saying the district is doubling down on efforts to protect students and families by creating and expanding “safe zones” around campuses, before and after school, with the help of community workers, school police and local police departments.

Bass was not specific about what role the Los Angeles Police Department would play.

“The school police and the Los Angeles Police Department have a strong working relationship and will continue to share information as appropriate as needed,” Bass said. “But neither police departments assist with immigration enforcement and have not for many, many years. There will be adults in the community who will serve as eyes and ears on the street.”

At least two mayors from smaller cities pledged direct police assistance in patrolling areas around schools.

Although local police are not legally allowed to stop or interfere with federal law enforcement actions, authorities will alert parents along walking routes if agents are in the area. Also, they will trigger a communication chain to alert all nearby campuses of raids so that schools can take lockdown actions as necessary.

The public commitment was intended to reassure families that school will be a safe place and that officials also will do what they can to protect families on their way to and from campuses.

In a string of recent appearances, Carvalho has reviewed a list of measures taken by the nation’s second-largest school system.

These included home visits and calls in recent weeks to more than 10,000 families considered at risk of immigration enforcement or at risk of not coming to schools. The school system also is distributing family preparedness packets, “all the information in one single form, in a multitude of languages,” said Carvalho, with the goal of “explaining the rights of our children and their parents, but also providing easy access to the resources that we have available to all of them.”

The district also has created a “compassion fund” to provide general help for families, including legal assistance.

In addition to students from immigrant families, the school system also has more than 350 employees who are working legally but who could have their legal status revoked.

“They continue to be the valiant, productive workers they are with us,” Carvalho said last week.

The district is working to reroute buses to make transportation more accessible to families. For the most part, the busing system is used by students with disabilities — for whom transportation is legally required — and students attending magnet programs at campuses far from where they live.

But this could change when the parameter for riding a bus is safety. In this light, neighborhood proximity to bus stops matters a lot, because families can be exposed to immigration enforcement while traveling to and from a stop.

The buses themselves will be a considered an extension of the campus environment and federal agents will not be permitted to board them.

The Monday news conference took place at Roybal Learning Center, just west of downtown, which also is the headquarters of the L.A. Unified School Police Department, which is expected to have a role in monitoring immigration enforcement and potentially confronting it.

Others in attendance included members of the L.A. Board of Education as well as South Gate Mayor Maria Davila. West Hollywood Mayor Chelsea Lee Byers and Bell Mayor Mayor Ali Saleh.

Los Angeles Unified covers an area totaling 710 square miles, which includes most of the city of Los Angeles, along with all or portions of 25 cities and some unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County. About 4.8 million people live within school-district boundaries.

July 7 (UPI) — The United States has ended federal protections shielding thousands of migrants from Nicaragua and Honduras from deportation, angering immigration and civil rights advocacy groups as the Trump administration continues to remove longstanding immigration protections from migrants.

The Homeland Security Department announced the end of the Temporary Protected Status designation for those from the two Central American nations in separate statements Monday, saying the move will go into effect in 60 days.

Commonly known as TPS, the designation is intended to prevent the deportation of eligible migrants to their home countries where they could be put at risk due to natural disaster or conflict. Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has already moved to end TPS designations for Afghanistan, Haiti, Venezuela and Nepal — which have attracted litigation.

The United States first designated Nicaragua and Honduras for TPS in 1999, following the devastation caused by Hurricane Mitch a year prior.

According to DHS figures published in a September report from the Congressional Research Service, nearly 3,000 Nicaraguans and more than 54,000 Hondurans have been approved to stay in the United States under TPS.

“Temporary Protected Status was designed to be just that — temporary,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said.

In both statements announcing the end of TPS for Nicaragua and Honduras, DHS cited “improved conditions” in the Central American nations, and that after speaking with interagency partners, Noem decided neither country meets the TPS statutory requirements.

Honduran and Nicaraguan nationals are being “encouraged” to report their departure from the United States with the use of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection smartphone application to leave the country with “a complementary plane ticket” as well as “a $1,000 exit bonus to help them resettle.”

The American Civil Liberties Union was quick to file a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Monday, asking the court to declare its termination of TPS for Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act as the decision to do so was “not based on an objective review of country conditions.”

It said the termination decision by the Trump administration will affect tens of thousands of migrants, some of whom have been in the United States for 26 years.

“I am devastated at the heartless decision to terminate TPS for Honduras,” Johny Silva, a plaintiff in the case said in a statement from the ACLU.

Silva, 29, has been in the United States since he was three years old, is a father of a U.S. citizen with special needs and works as a certified nurse.

“I’ve been doing it the ‘right way’ the whole time. Now, I am facing losing my job, the ability to care for my family and the only home I’ve ever known,” he said.

Jessica Bansal, an attorney at the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, lambasted the Trump administration’s move as not only “callous,” but illegal.

“The administration cannot manufacture a predetermined outcome without regard for its statutory obligations,” Bansal said.

The lawsuit alleges that the decision by the Trump administration was motivated by racism against immigrants perceived as non-White, pointing to comments made by White House officials, including Vice President JD Vance.

Vance had amplified and repeated misinformation that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets. Later, when confronted with proof that the story was false, Vance said he was willing to “create stories so that the American media actually pays attention.”

Trump returned to the White House in January after using often derogatory rhetoric and misinformation about migrants in support of his plans to conduct mass deportations.

Amid his second term, Trump has tried to make good on his campaign promises, but has attracted criticism for attacking the due process rights of migrants as well as facing litigation. Several judges have issued rulings blocking his termination of TPS for Haitians as well as Venezuelans, with the latter decision being stayed by the Supreme Court in May.

The bipartisan immigration and justice reform FWD.us organization called the move by the Trump administration to terminate TPS for Nicaraguans and Hondurans “a serious mistake” that is part “of a broader campaign to target and preemptively revoke legal status from immigrants, leaving them vulnerable to detention, family separation and deportation.

“It does nothing to strengthen our immigration system, reflects an approach Americans are increasingly rejecting and, as our recent economic analysis shows, will also unnecessarily raise the costs for families in the U.S.,” FWD.us President Todd Schulte said in a statement.

“We need policies that reflect the reality that immigration is good for America and for all Americans.”

DES MOINES — Iowa became the first state to remove gender identity from its civil rights code under a law that took effect Tuesday, meaning transgender and nonbinary residents are no longer protected from discrimination in their job, housing and other aspects of life.

The law also explicitly defines female and male based on reproductive organs at birth and removes the ability for people to change the sex designation on their birth certificate.

An unprecedented take-back of legal rights after nearly two decades in Iowa code leaves transgender, nonbinary and potentially even intersex Iowans more vulnerable now than they were before. It’s a governing doctrine now widely adopted by President Trump and Republican-led states despite the mainstream medical view that sex and gender are better understood as a spectrum than as an either-or definition.

When Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed Iowa’s new law, she said the state’s previous civil rights code “blurred the biological line between the sexes.”

“It’s common sense to acknowledge the obvious biological differences between men and women. In fact, it’s necessary to secure genuine equal protection for women and girls,” she said in a video statement.

Also taking effect Tuesday are provisions in the state’s health and human services budget that say Medicaid recipients are no longer covered for gender-affirming surgery or hormone therapy.

A national movement

Iowa’s state Capitol filled with protesters as the law went through the Republican-controlled Legislature and to Reynolds’ desk in just one week in February. Iowa Republicans said laws passed in recent years to restrict transgender students’ use of bathrooms and locker rooms, and their participation on sports teams, could not coexist with a civil rights code that includes gender identity protections.

About two dozen other states and the Trump administration have advanced restrictions on transgender people. Republicans say such laws and executive actions protect spaces for women, rejecting the idea that people can transition to another gender. Many face court challenges.

About two-thirds of U.S. adults believe that whether a person is a man or woman is determined by biological characteristics at birth, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in May found. But there’s less consensus on policies that target transgender and nonbinary people.

Transgender people say those kinds of policies deny their existence and capitalize on prejudice for political gain.

In a major setback for transgender rights nationwide, the U.S. Supreme Court last month upheld Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone treatments for transgender minors. The court’s conservative majority said it doesn’t violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause, which requires the government to treat similarly situated people the same.

Not every state includes gender identity in their civil rights code, but Iowa was the first to remove nondiscrimination protections based on gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ+ rights think tank.

Incidents of discrimination in Iowa, before and after July 1

Iowans will still have time to file a complaint with the state Office of Civil Rights about discrimination based on gender identity that occurred before the law took effect.

State law requires a complaint to be submitted within 300 days after the most recent incident of alleged discrimination. That means people have until April 27 to file a complaint about discrimination based on gender identity, according to Kristen Stiffler, the office’s executive director.

Sixty-five such complaints were filed and accepted for investigation from July 2023 through the end of June 2024, according to Stiffler. Forty-three were filed and accepted from July 1, 2024, through June 19 of this year.

Iowa state Rep. Aime Wichtendahl, a Democrat and the state’s first openly transgender lawmaker, fears the law will lead to an increase in discrimination for transgender Iowans.

“Anytime someone has to check your ID and they see that the gender marker doesn’t match the appearance, then that opens up hostility, discrimination as possibilities,” Wichtendahl said, naming examples such as applying for a job, going through the airport, buying beer or getting pulled over in a traffic stop. “That instantly outs you. That instantly puts you on the spot.”

About half of U.S. states include gender identity in their civil rights code to protect against discrimination in housing and public places, such as stores or restaurants, according to the Movement Advancement Project. Some additional states do not explicitly protect against such discrimination, but it is included in legal interpretations of statutes.

Five years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled LGBTQ+ people are protected by a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace. But Iowa’s Supreme Court has expressly rejected the argument that discrimination based on sex includes discrimination based on gender identity.

Changing Iowa birth certificates before the law took effect

The months between when the bill was signed into law and when it took effect gave transgender Iowans time to pursue amended birth certificates before that option was eliminated.

Keenan Crow, with LGBTQ+ advocacy group One Iowa, said the group has long co-sponsored legal clinics to assist with that process.

“The last one that we had was by far the biggest,” Crow said.

Iowa’s Department of Transportation still has a process by which people can change the gender designation on their license or identification card, but has proposed administrative rules to eliminate that option.

Wichtendahl also said she has talked to some families who are looking to move out of state as a result of the new law.

“It’s heartbreaking because this is people’s lives we’re talking about,” Wichtendahl added. “These are families that have trans loved ones and it’s keeping their loved ones away, it’s putting their loved ones into uncertain future, putting their health and safety at risk.”

Fingerhut writes for the Associated Press.

McALLEN, Texas — The Trump administration is seeking to end an immigration policy cornerstone that since the 1990s has offered protections to child migrants in federal custody, a move that will be challenged by advocates, according to a court filing Thursday.

The protections in place, known as the Flores Settlement, largely limit to 72 hours the amount of time that child migrants traveling alone or with family are detained by the U.S. Border Patrol. They also ensure the children are kept in safe and sanitary conditions.

President Trump tried to end the protections during his first term and his allies have long railed against it. The court filing, submitted jointly by the administration and advocates, says the government plans to detail its arguments later Thursday and propose a hearing on July 18 before U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee.

The settlement is named for a Salvadoran girl, Jenny Flores, whose lawsuit alleging widespread mistreatment of children in custody in the 1980s prompted special oversight.

In August 2019, the first Trump administration asked a judge to dissolve the agreement. Its motion eventually was struck down in December 2020 by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Under the Biden administration, oversight protections for child migrants were lifted for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services after new guidelines were put in place last year.

The Department of Homeland Security is still beholden to the agreement, including Customs and Border Protection, which detains and processes children after their arrival in the U.S. with or without their parents. Children then are usually released with their families or sent to a shelter operated by Health and Human Services, though processing times often go up when the number of people entering increases in a short period.

Even with the agreement in place, there have been instances where the federal government failed to provide adequate conditions for children, as in a case in Texas where nearly 300 children had to be moved from a Border Patrol facility following reports they were receiving inadequate food, water and sanitation.

Court-appointed monitors provide oversight of the agreement and report noncompliant facilities to Gee. Customs and Border Protection was set to resume its own oversight, but in January a federal judge ruled it was not ready and extended the use of court-appointed monitors for another 18 months.

Gonzalez writes for the Associated Press.