Business Immigration Insights

On October 3, 2018, California U.S. District Judge Edward Chen granted a preliminary injunction in the case of Ramos v. Nielsen, preventing the Department of Homeland Security from terminating Temporary Protected Status for El Salvador (scheduled to end on 9/9/19), Haiti (7/22/19), Nicaragua (1/5/19), and Sudan (11/2/18).  The injunction remains in place until the Court lifts it or the lawsuit ends.

Although suit was brought on behalf of U.S. citizen children with TPS parents, the temporary injunction broadly protects all TPS holders from those four countries.  Studies have estimated that more than 200,000 children with U.S. citizenship have at least one parent with TPS.

Citing President Trump’s public remarks from 2015 through 2018 as evidence, Judge Chen raised the possibility that the TPS terminations violated the equal protection guarantee of the U.S. constitution if they were “influenced or manipulated” by Trump’s “animus against non-white, non-European immigrants.”

Additional pending lawsuits include Centro Presente v. Trump, in Massachusetts, which challenges TPS terminations for El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti; and Saget v. Trump, in New York, which challenges TPS termination for some 60,000 Haitians.  In late July, the Massachusetts court also cited the president’s “discriminatory animus” in denying the government’s motions to dismiss.