US judge blocks deportation of 3,000 Yemeni refugees
A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from forcing about 3,000 Yemeni refugees to leave the US, ruling that Temporary Protected Status repeatedly granted to them and due to expire Monday should be extended again.
Judge Dale E Ho in Manhattan extended the status temporarily while a lawsuit he presides over proceeds. He said in a written decision that people granted the status are ordinary, law-abiding people who the US government had determined could face threats to their safety if they were returned to a country facing an ongoing armed conflict.
Amid its immigration crackdown, the Trump administration has terminated Temporary Protected Status for people from nine countries, including Haiti, Venezuela and Ethiopia.
Before Ho's ruling, protections for Yemeni refugees were set to end on Monday, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services.
People with Temporary Protected Status are eligible to remain in the US, may not be removed from the country, and are able to receive work and travel authorisation. In his ruling, Ho criticised former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, saying Congress had established a process for Temporary Protected Status to be altered or rescinded, but she had not followed it.
He was particularly critical of a social media message she sent out in early December in which she said she had just met with President Donald Trump and was recommending a full travel ban “on every damn country that's been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”
On Feb 13, he noted, Noem announced in a news release that Temporary Protected Status would be terminated for Yemen, finding that letting them stay in the US was “contrary to our national interest.”
“TPS holders from Yemen are not killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies,” Ho wrote at the start of his conclusion in his 36-page decision.
