WASHINGTON – The Trump administration is criticizing lower court judges who have slowed its efforts to strip legal protections from a broad swath of migrants living in the U.S. It's asking the Supreme Court to clear the way for moves that could expose thousands more people to deportation.
The Justice Department wants a broad ruling that would let it move more quickly to end legal protections for migrants from multiple countries, including Haiti and Syria, according to a letter sent to the high court on Monday.
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The Trump administration argues that the federal government has the authority to end temporary protected status as it sees fit, without intervention from the courts.
But lower courts have disagreed, including a judge in Washington D.C. that found “hostility to nonwhite immigrants" likely played a role in the decision to end protections for Haitians. An appeals court upheld the decision.
The Supreme Court, though, has sided with the Trump administration on the issue before, allowing the termination of protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans to proceed amid litigation. It was part of a series of wins for Trump on the Supreme Court’s short-term emergency docket that have allowed him to move ahead with key parts of his agenda.
Now the administration is asking for a ruling finding that courts can't question the Department of Homeland Security moves that come amid a wider mass deportation effort.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the lower-court judges have shown “persistent disregard” for the court's earlier emergency-docket decisions, part of a cycle that looks "likely to repeat again and again unless and until this Court steps in.”
He appealed a ruling keeping protections for Syrian immigrants last month, and said Monday he plans to appeal another decision affecting about 350,000 Haitians.
A group of more than 175 former judges has also weighed in, arguing that emergency-docket rulings are not settled law and the court should allow the normal appeals process to play out.
The protections for Haitians were first granted in 2010 after a catastrophic earthquake and has been extended multiple times. The country is still racked by gang violence that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
Homeland Security says that conditions have improved and denied racial animus played a role. Attorneys for the Haitian migrants, though, say “people will almost certainly die” if the Trump administration ends the program.
Temporary protected status can be granted by the Homeland Security secretary if conditions in home countries are deemed unsafe for return due to a natural disaster, political instability or other dangers. It is granted in 18-month increments and does not provide a legal pathway to citizenship.
The Department of Homeland Security has also terminated protections for about 600,000 Venezuelans, 6,100 Syrians, 60,000 people from Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal, more than 160,000 Ukrainians and thousands of people from Afghanistan and Cameroon.