When Joe Biden was in office, he started a new program offering Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to certain categories of migrants.
Among those were 520,000 Haitians, from whom Trump has been trying to remove the protections, so they can be sent back home.
Yet another judge has now blocked Trump, this time, a George Bush-appointed jurist.
When Biden was in office, he offered TPS like it was Halloween candy.
This, in essence, was Biden moving illegal immigration over to the legal category with the swipe of a pen.
As you may recall, during Biden’s last year in office, he really went crazy with this, giving TPS protections to nearly one million immigrants from El Salvador, Sudan, Ukraine, and Venezuela.
This was in addition to the status orders that had already been given out, including more than 500,000 Haitians.
A big part of Trump’s immigration plan was to remove these orders and start to send people back who never would have passed through the normal asylum process.
I have read reports that estimated at least 90% of those given protected status would have been denied asylum if the cases had gone through the usual immigration channels.
At the time, a DHS spokesperson stated, "This decision restores integrity in our immigration system and ensures that Temporary Protective Status is actually temporary.”
The statement continued, "The environmental situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home. We encourage these individuals to take advantage of the Department’s resources in returning to Haiti, which can be arranged through the CBP Home app. Haitian nationals may pursue lawful status through other immigration benefit requests, if eligible."
Enter U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan, a Bush appointee, who just blocked the order by Trump.
Cogan wrote, "Secretary Noem does not have statutory or inherent authority to partially vacate a country’s TPS designation." He went on to call the changing of the status “unlawful.”
DHS responded, saying, "The environmental situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home. We encourage these individuals to take advantage of the Department’s resources in returning to Haiti, which can be arranged through the CBP Home app. Haitian nationals may pursue lawful status through other immigration benefit requests, if eligible."
This will be appealed, of course, and is likely to wind up like other immigration cases and eventually go before the Supreme Court. The challenge will be for the administration to prove that the circumstances that resulted in the initial order are no longer in play, as the DHS contended in its statement.