A federal appeals court ruled that the Department of Homeland Security can end deportation protections for nearly 90,000 migrants from Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua. The decision halts a previous ruling from December, where District Judge Trina Thompson argued DHS Secretary Kristi Noem “made a pre-ordained decision to end TPS and influenced the conditions review process to facilitate TPS terminations for Honduras, Nicaragua, and Nepal.”
“[O]ur preliminary analysis of plaintiffs’ [Administrative Procedure Act] claims is that the government is likely to prevail in its argument that the Secretary’s decision-making process in terminating TPS for Honduras, Nicaragua, and Nepal was not arbitrary and capricious,” the court wrote. “Specifically, the government can likely show that the administrative record adequately supports the Secretary’s action, that the TPS statute does not require the Secretary to consider intervening country conditions arising after the events that led to the initial TPS designation, and that the Secretary’s decision not to consider intervening conditions does not amount to an unexplained change in policy.”
Noem called the legal victory a “win for the rule of law and vindication for the US Constitution.”
“Under the previous administration, Temporary Protected Status was abused to allow violent terrorists, criminals, and national security threats into our nation,” she said. “TPS was never designed to be permanent, yet previous administrations have used it as a de facto amnesty program for decades. Given the improved situation in each of these countries, we are wisely concluding what was intended to be a temporary designation.”
The Biden administration extended TPS for Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua, as well as El Salvador, in 2023.
