temporarily

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.

Sao Paulo, Brazil – Venezuela has temporarily closed its border with Brazil following the United States’s early morning attack on Caracas, in which US forces also “captured” President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

The border crossing between the Brazilian city of Pacaraima and Santa Elena de Uairen in Venezuela had been closed on the Venezuelan side for about five hours, blocking citizens from entering Brazil, a Brazilian military official told Al Jazeera.

“There was no formal protocol from Venezuela regarding entry and exit criteria. The fact is that Brazilians are allowed to leave, while Venezuelans face restrictions. But this could change at any time,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak on the matter.

The head of Brazil’s Federal Police also announced the temporary closure, and the governor of the state of Roraima told Reuters that the border had been reopened after the brief closure.

Brazil’s government said it is monitoring the border and has sent military personnel to the region to bolster security.

“The Minister of Defense indicated that there is no abnormal activity on the border between Brazil and Venezuela, which will continue to be monitored, and that he is in contact with the Governor of Roraima,” read a statement from Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Venezuelans make up Brazil’s largest foreign population, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. The state of Roraima alone is home to 77,563 immigrants from the country. In all, some 8 million Venezuelans have fled their homes in the past decade, with more than 6 million resettling in other Latin American countries.

“I think it’s very possible that there will be an exodus of Venezuelans to Brazil, and, in fact, we are already seeing concrete signs of it,” Jessica Leon Cedeno, a Venezuelan journalist who lives in Sao Paulo, told Al Jazeera.

“Millions of people have left the country in search of better living conditions and opportunities.”

Lula says US attacks could ‘destabilise’ the region

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Saturday that US President Donald Trump’s actions inside Venezuela were “unacceptable”.

“The bombings on Venezuelan territory and the capture of its president cross an unacceptable line,” wrote Lula on X. “These acts represent a grave affront to Venezuela’s sovereignty and yet another extremely dangerous precedent for the entire international community.”

Brazil’s leader has urged restraint for months amid an increased US military buildup off Venezuela’s coast.

Analysts worry that Maduro’s removal could plunge Venezuela into chaos, potentially resulting in another wave of mass migration, as it witnessed in 2019 after a failed attempt to remove Maduro.

Joao Carlos Jarochinski Silva, a professor of international relations at the Federal University of Roraima, said that a potential wave of migration would depend on multiple factors, including whether Washington continues its military campaign inside the country and whether what remains of Maduro’s regime will put up a fight.

“What is the resilience capacity of Chavismo within Venezuela?” Jarochinski Silva said, referring to the political movement named after former President Hugo Chavez. “This could have consequences that are truly worrying, but given the current scenario, there is no context of fear.”

He added that Trump has so far focused on applauding his military’s action inside Venezuela and has not addressed key humanitarian concerns. Earlier this year, the Trump administration cut funding to the US government’s main agency for foreign aid, USAID, which heavily affected Venezuela’s neighbours, Brazil and Colombia.

“The United States has been cutting humanitarian resources lately,” he said, adding that there will be consequences to the US military actions inside the country. “For example, refugees, other people who may be affected by this. He doesn’t commit to this agenda at any point.”

Dec. 30 (UPI) — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to reinstate temporary protected status against deportation for citizens of South Sudan.

U.S. District Court of Massachusetts Judge Angel Kelley, in a four-page ruling, ordered an administrative stay of the Trump administration’s decision to end TPS for those from South Sudan as of Jan. 6.

“Because of the serious consequences at stake, both for the plaintiffs and the defendants, the court finds an administrative stay appropriate as it would ‘minimize harm’ while allowing the assigned district court judge the time this case deserves,” Kelley said.

The stay does not represent the merits of the case and instead gives the court time to weigh arguments and evidence before rendering a decision.

Kelley, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden in 2021, gave plaintiffs through Jan. 9 to file their arguments and the Trump administration through Jan. 13.

She will rule on the matter after reviewing the respective arguments.

The federal lawsuit was filed on Dec. 22 by African Communities Together on behalf of four unnamed plaintiffs and all others similarly situated, which makes it a class action.

The defendants are the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the federal government.

African Communities Together says 232 South Sudanese nationals benefit from TPS, plus another 73 who have applied for TPS protection.

The Obama administration first provided TPS protection for those from South Sudan in 2011, and the status repeatedly was extended over the past 14 years.

South Sudan became an independent nation in 2011 in East Africa, but it has been subject to war and conflict since then.

Noem in November announced conditions in South Sudan have changed and no longer merit TPS status for its citizens in the United States.

TPS status enables recipients to stay in the United States and obtain work authorizations when their home countries are subject to armed conflict, environmental disasters and other “extraordinary conditions.”

While the plaintiffs oppose deportations of South Sudanese to their nation of citizenship, the Supreme Court recently approved the Trump administration’s deportation of eight others — seven of whom are citizens of other countries — to South Sudan.