A US court of appeals on Monday gave the green light for the administration of US President Donald Trump to expel hundreds of thousands of nationals from four countries who had been granted protected status for humanitarian reasons.
In a 2-1 ruling, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said a federal court in San Francisco had erred when it issued an injunction protecting more than 300,000 immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan from being deported from the US.
The administration has sought to end the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) granted to these people — who have several hundred thousand American children — on the grounds that their countries which were previously wracked by unrest were now safe.
Monday’s ruling will not result in the immediate deportation of TPS holders, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said, as the challengers have vowed to file an appeal.
Writing for the majority, Judge Consuelo Callahan disagreed with arguments that a bid to terminate TPS was influenced by Trump’s alleged anti-immigrant bias shown through his controversial remarks, including a 2018 comment in which he referred to “shithole countries.”
“Plaintiffs fail to present even ‘serious questions’ on the merits of their claim that the decretaries’ TPS terminations were improperly influenced by the president’s ‘animus against non-white, non-European immigrants,’” Callahan wrote, referring to US-citizen children of TPS holders who are behind the case brought before the court.
In addition, the court’s majority said that while it did not “condone the offensive and disparaging nature” of Trump’s remarks, there was no proof his “alleged racial animus was a motivating factor in the TPS decisions.”
A statement by the ACLU said Monday’s ruling would lead to families who have lived lawfully in the US to be torn apart and vowed to fight the decision.
“The president’s vile statements about TPS holders made perfectly clear that his administration acted out of racial animus,” Ahilan Arulanantham, senior counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California, said in a statement. “The constitution does not permit policy to be driven by racism.”
Yael Schacher, an immigration historian and senior advocate at Refugees International, also denounced the ruling.
“Many of those with TPS have lived in the United States for more than two decades and are serving as essential workers on the front lines of the pandemic response,” she said. “The pain and fear caused by this decision will be felt deeply in communities across the United States, as long-time residents living with TPS are now left in limbo and face the risk of being separated from their American-born children.”
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not