Judge voids decision to end legal status of 60,000 immigrants

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A national justice successful California connected Wednesday voided the Trump administration's determination to terminate the Temporary Protected Status of astir 60,000 immigrants from Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua, calling it a "pre-ordained decision."

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the termination of the TPS programs for Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua successful June and July, saying the 3 countries had recovered from the biology disasters that prompted the U.S. authorities to assistance their nationals impermanent ineligible refuge.

Created by Congress successful 1990, the TPS argumentation allows the U.S. authorities to springiness definite foreigners deportation protections and enactment permits, temporarily, if their autochthonal countries are facing equipped conflict, an biology catastrophe oregon different exigency that makes their instrumentality unsafe.

In precocious July, U.S. District Court Judge Trina Thompson delayed the termination of the TPS programs for Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua, issuing a preliminary uncovering that the Trump medication failed to see lingering problems successful 3 nations and that the determination to terminate the policies was motivated by radical animus, oregon radical hostility. That ruling was paused successful August by an appeals court, allowing the Trump medication to extremity the programs.

But Thompson issued a summary judgment connected Wednesday, uncovering that the effort to revoke the ineligible presumption of tens of thousands of Hondurans, Nepalis and Nicaraguans was unlawful. She said Noem's determination "was preordained and pretextual alternatively than based connected an nonsubjective reappraisal of the state conditions arsenic required by the TPS statute and the (Administrative Procedures Act)."

"The grounds specifically reflects that, earlier taking office, the Secretary made a pre-ordained determination to extremity TPS and influenced the conditions reappraisal process to facilitate TPS terminations for Honduras, Nicaragua, and Nepal," Thompson wrote successful her order.

The TPS designations for Honduras and Nicaragua were archetypal created successful the precocious 1990s, aft the devastation caused by Hurricane Mitch, which killed thousands successful Central America. Many of those antecedently enrolled successful those programs arrived successful the U.S. much than 2 decades ago. The TPS argumentation for Nepal was established successful 2015, pursuing a deadly earthquake successful the tiny Asian nation.

The Trump medication has mounted an assertive effort to dismantle astir TPS programs, arguing the argumentation attracts amerciable migration and that it has been abused by Democratic administrations and extended for acold excessively long. It has besides moved to terminate TPS protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Haiti, Myanmar, Sudan, Syria and Venezuela.

CBS News reached retired to the Department of Homeland Security seeking remark connected Wednesday's order.

Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy, said Wednesday's ruling should let TPS holders from Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal to enactment successful the U.S. legally and forestall national migration officials from detaining and deporting them.

"The court's determination contiguous restores TPS protections for thousands of semipermanent law-abiding TPS-holding residents from Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua," Arulanantham said.