protections

The decision is expected to affect about 1,100 people and is likely to face legal challenges.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump will end temporary deportation protections and work permits for some Somali nationals in the US, authorities say.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Tuesday that the Trump administration was ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which shields migrants from deportation to countries where it is deemed unsafe to return and grants temporary work authorisation, for Somalis living in the US.

“Country conditions in Somalia have improved to the point that it no longer meets the law’s requirement for Temporary Protected Status,” Noem said in a statement. “Further, allowing Somali nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to our national interests. We are putting Americans first.”

The decision, which is expected to affect about 1,100 people, is likely to face legal challenges.

The Somali community has become a frequent target of the Trump administration. The US president has called Somalis “garbage” and depicted them as criminals.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has lashed out at Somalis in the US, alleging large-scale public benefit fraud in Minnesota’s Somali community, the largest in the country, with about 80,000 members.

Trump has threatened to strip any naturalised Somali or foreign-born person of their US citizenship if they were convicted of fraud, as he continued his attacks on the Somali community.

“We’re going to revoke the citizenship of any naturalised immigrant from Somalia or anywhere else who is convicted of defrauding our citizens,” Trump said on Tuesday.

The administration has additionally cut off Minnesota’s access to federal childcare assistance and surged immigration enforcement agents to the state, home to a sizeable Somali population, prompting widespread anger and condemnation from local and state officials over aggressive immigration raids.

Heavily-armed agents have broken car windows and detained people, used frequent force against protesters, and asked residents for proof of citizenship, drawing concerns from civil liberties groups.

Tensions rose further after a federal immigration agent last week shot and killed Renee Good, a US citizen and mother of three, who had been acting as a legal monitor of federal immigration activity in Minneapolis.

BOSTON — A federal judge said Friday that she expects to temporarily block efforts by the Trump administration to end a program that offered temporary legal protections for more than 10,000 family members of citizens and green card holders.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani said at a hearing that she planned to issue a temporary restraining order but did not say when it would be issued. This case is part of a broader effort by the administration to end temporary legal protection for numerous groups and comes just over a week since another judge ruled that hundreds of people from South Sudan may live and work in the United States legally.

“The government, having invited people to apply, is now laying traps between those people and getting the green card,” said Justin Cox, an attorney who works with Justice Action Center and argued the case for the plaintiffs. “That is incredibly inequitable.”

This case involved a program called Family Reunification Parole, or FRP, and affects people from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras. Most of them are set to lose their legal protections, which were put in place during the Biden administration, by Wednesday. The Department of Homeland Security terminated protections late last year.

The case involves five plaintiffs, but lawyers are seeking to have any ruling cover everyone that is part of the program.

“Although in a temporary status, these parolees did not come temporarily; they came to get a jump-start on their new lives in the United States, typically bringing immediate family members with them,” plaintiffs wrote in their motion. “Since they arrived, FRP parolees have gotten employment authorization documents, jobs, and enrolled their kids in school.”

The government, in its brief and in court, argued that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has the authority to terminate any parole program and gave adequate notice by publishing the termination in the federal registry. It also argued that the program’s termination was necessary on national security grounds because the people had not been property vetted. It also said resources to maintain this program would be better used in other immigration programs.

“Parole can be terminated at any time,” Katie Rose Talley, a lawyer for the government told the court. “That is what is being done. There is nothing unlawful about that.”

Talwani conceded that the government can end the program but she took issue with the way it was done.

The government argued that just announcing in the federal registry it was ending the program was sufficient. But Talwani demanded the government show how it has alerted people through a written notice — a letter or email — that the program was ending.

“I understand why plaintiffs feel like they came here and made all these plans and were going to be here for a very long time,” Talwani said. “I have a group of people who are trying to follow the law. I am saying to you that, we as Americans, the United States needs to.”

Lower courts have largely supported keeping temporary protections for many groups. But in May, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to strip temporary legal protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants for now, pushing the total number of people who could be newly exposed to deportation to nearly 1 million.

The justices lifted a lower-court order that kept humanitarian parole protections in place for more than 500,000 migrants from four countries: Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The decision came after the court allowed the administration to revoke temporary legal status from about 350,000 Venezuelan migrants in another case.

The court did not explain its reasoning in the brief order, as is typical on its emergency docket. Two justices publicly dissented.

Casey writes for the Associated Press.

Trump is seeking to end protected status for South Sudan, claiming country no longer poses danger to those returning.

A federal judge has blocked the administration of President Donald Trump from stripping temporary protections from deportations for South Sudanese citizens living in the United States.

US District Judge Angel Kelley in Boston, Massachusetts, granted an emergency request on Tuesday in a lawsuit filed by several South Sudanese nationals and an immigrant rights group.

The order prevents the temporary protected status (TPS) for South Sudanese citizens from expiring on January 5 as the Trump administration has sought.

The lawsuit, led by the African ‍Communities Together, accuses the US Department of Homeland Security of acting unlawfully in its effort to strip South Sudanese citizens of TPS, a US immigration status granted to citizens of countries experiencing natural disasters, conflict or other extraordinary circumstances that could make return to their homelands dangerous.

The status was initially granted for South Sudan in 2011 when the country officially broke away from Sudan. It has been repeatedly renewed amid repeated bouts of fighting, widespread displacement and regional instability.

​The status allows eligible individuals to work and receive temporary protection from deportation.

The lawsuit further alleged that the Trump administration exposed South Sudan citizens to being deported to a country facing what is widely considered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, in a notice published on November ‌5, had argued the country no longer met the conditions for TPS.

“With the renewed peace in South Sudan, their demonstrated commitment to ensuring the safe reintegration of returning nationals, and improved diplomatic relations, now is the right time to conclude what was always intended to ‌be a temporary designation,” she said, appearing to refer to a tenuous 2018 peace agreement.

The statement contradicted the findings of a panel of United Nations experts, who wrote in a report to the UN Security Council in November that “while the contours of the conflict may be altered, the resulting human suffering has remained unchanged.”

“Ongoing conflict and aerial bombardments, coupled with flooding and the influx of returnees and refugees from the Sudan, have led to near-record levels of food insecurity, with pockets of famine reported in some of the communities most affected by renewed fighting,” it added.

The Trump administration has increasingly targeted TPS as part of its crackdown on immigration and its mass deportation drive.

It has moved to similarly ‌end TPS for foreign nationals from countries including Syria, Venezuela, Haiti, ⁠Cuba and Nicaragua, prompting several court challenges.

It has also sought to deport individuals to countries in Africa, even if they have no ties there.