Donald Trump, left, shakes hands with Kristi Noem at a campaign rally on Saturday, March 16, 2024, in Vandalia, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
An appeals court has allowed the Trump administration to proceed in its plan to strip temporary protected status (TPS) designations for Afghans and Cameroonians in the United States.
The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit denying an emergency motion to postpone the TPS terminations places the status of thousands of TPS grantees from the two countries at risk.
While the appellate court suggested the plaintiff – the immigration advocacy group CASA Inc. – has made a “plausible claim for relief,” the court said on Monday that it cannot stop the government from acting as the case continues in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
“We agree with the district court that CASA, Inc. has stated a plausible claim for relief with regard to the alleged “preordained’ decision to terminate temporary protected status (TPS) for Afghanistan and Cameroon, and that the balance of the equities and the public interest weigh in favor of CASA, Inc,” the judges wrote. “At this procedural posture, however, there is insufficient evidence to warrant the extraordinary remedy of a postponement of agency action pending appeal.”
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The appellate judges asked the district court “to move expeditiously” as the case continues, warning of the uncertainty that is likely to result from drawn out litigation. Furthermore, they emphasized that while they did not grant the emergency motion right now, “[n]othing in this Order should be construed to opine on whether a postponement of agency action may be warranted” as the case moves on.
The unanimous three-judge panel — U.S. Circuit Judge Roger Gregory, appointed by both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Judge Robert Bruce King, a Clinton appointee, and Judge Nicole Berner, a Joe Biden appointee — also affirmed that TPS grantees from Afghanistan and Cameroon may still have other remedies of remaining in the U.S. – such as through an application for asylum and withholding of removal.
CASA sued the Department of Homeland Security and its secretary, Kristi Noem, on May 7 after reports emerged weeks earlier that she had terminated the protections for Afghanistan and Cameroon – designations created and then extended under the Biden administration. The plaintiff contended that the terminations did not follow guidelines set by the Administrative Procedure Act and that the administration’s decision for termination “were based at least in part on racial animus.”
The Trump administration has maintained that TPS is by design temporary, and that it is their prerogative whether to remove – or not extend – the designation.
In an amended complaint roughly two weeks later, the plaintiff added new phrasing – writing that the TPS terminations were not driven by considerations of national security or because conditions had improved in the relevant countries. Rather, the action to terminate “was a preordained decision directed by the President, a part of the Trump Administration’s broader effort to reduce the number of nonwhite immigrants in this country,” they wrote.
Afghanistan’s TPS designation was set to expire on May 20; Cameroon’s was set to expire on June 7. However, those dates were later extended to July 14 and Aug. 4, respectively – in order to follow the TPS statute that terminations must not be effective earlier than 60 days of their announcement in the Federal Register.
The case proceeded – and U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang denied the plaintiff’s motion for a stay of the federal government’s action to terminate. This ruling prompted the appeal to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Trump administration was blocked from deporting Afghans under TPS designations for one week.
That stay ran out on Monday – when the appeals court held that it could no longer postpone the administration from acting. The order sets the approximately 11,700 Afghans under TPS to be summarily deported, while the estimated 5,200 Cameroonians under the designation have less than two weeks.
TPS designations are given to foreign countries embroiled in conflict, such as civil war or natural disasters, DHS says, allowing citizens in those countries to seek temporary refuge in the U.S.
The Trump administration has tried to strip TPS protections from several countries – including Haiti – arguing conditions have improved in these nations. The removals would help enable the Trump administration’s larger stated goal of mass deportations.
Afghanistan and Haiti both have “Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisories from the U.S. State Department, while the department warns those considering going to Cameroon to “exercise increased caution” due to “armed violence, civil unrest, crime, health, kidnapping, and terrorism.”
