(Washington) A federal judge prevented the Trump administration on Thursday from expelling more than 60,000 migrants from Nepal, Honduras and Nicaragua with protected status. Her scathing judgment reproached the Secretary of Internal Security, Kristi Noem, xenophobic stereotypes and racist conspiracy theories in her desire to suspend their legal status.
Government measures amount to asking the migrants to “expiate their race, leaving for their name and purifying their blood,” wrote Judge Trina L. Thompson from the North District of California. “The court does not agree. »»
Photo Andrew Caballero-Reynolds, Agence France-Presse Archives
US Interior Security Secretary Kristi Noem
The administration wants to withdraw from Hondurans, Nicaraguans and Nepalese their “temporary protection status” (SPT), granted under a program that subtracts migrants from expulsion measures if their country is prey to conflicts or natural disasters. This withdrawal was to come into force in the coming weeks, but Judge Thompson blocked it at least up to a hearing scheduled for November 18.
The great replacement
“By stereotyping the SPT program and immigrants as criminal invaders and emphasizing the need to manage migration, the secretary’s statements (Kristi’s internal security) Noem perpetuate discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population,” writes the judge.
The color (of the skin) is neither a poison nor a crime.
Trina L. Thompson, judge of the North District of California
Judge Thompson also quotes public declarations of Mme Noem, who described migrants as one of the “most dangerous people in the world” and who said that countries empty “their prisons, their psychiatric establishments” of their occupants to send them to the United States.
In a statement, the Department of Internal Security said that judge Thompson made an editorial while ignoring the meaning of the federal law.
“The SPT program has never been designed to be a de facto asylum system, but this is how previous administrations used it for decades,” said Tricia McLaughlin, spokesperson for the department. “This is a new example of the way in which judges out of control make racial propaganda to divert the attention of the facts” and “powers conferred on the president by the Constitution under article II”.
“We will call on and we hope that a superior jurisdiction will prove us right,” she added.
The ordinance of judge Thompson suspends any measure of the Department of Internal Security aimed at withdrawing these protections, “in order to preserve the status quo” until the court hears the arguments on the legality of this policy.
Afghans and Haitians still protected
The Trump administration also attempted to withdraw temporary protection status from other nationals – Afghans and Haitians, in particular -, but has come up against strong judicial resistance. But she won an important victory before the Supreme Court, which authorized the end of these protections for the Venezuelans.
Photo Leonardo Fernandez Viloria, Reuters archives
Venezuelans migrants expelled from the United States shortly after arriving at Simón-Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía, Venezuela
As it is customary during emergency queries, the Supreme Court did not explain its decision. However, judges of lower courts have expressed serious doubts about the reasons for the administration. Several have noted that if the government has always re -examined the temporary status of certain groups in order to assess its necessity, no president has ever changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of migrants by trying to end this program.
The government had argued in several cases that any delay in its initiatives affected the country’s foreign policy and national interests and that it was the responsibility of the president to modify the immigration policy.
Mme Noem proposed to withdraw the status in cases where the government determines that the disaster or the initial conflict is resolved. According to the Republicans, the program has moved away from its initial objective, transforming what was to be temporary protection into permanent de facto protection.
But judge Thompson, appointed by former president Joe Biden, writes that potential damage to the United States largely prevail over the disadvantage for the government to extend the protections.
She stresses that the abolition of protections would result in an estimated loss of $ 1.4 billion for the economy, as well as substantial loss of tax revenue and social security contributions and health insurance.
She adds that the postponement of the end of the program was above all necessary from a humanitarian point of view, to preserve the unity of families and to prevent people from being “unjustly expelled”.
“The freedom to live without fear, the possibility of being free and the American dream is all that the complainants ask,” she concludes.
This article was published in The New York Times.
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