A federal judge has ruled after a months-long legal challenge that the Trump administration can end temporary protected status for people from Somalia.
The White House moved to end temporary protected status — or TPS — for several hundred people from Somalia earlier this year, arguing they no longer qualify. TPS is granted to citizens of certain countries facing conflict or disaster.
Most of Minnesota's tens of thousands of Somali residents have U.S. citizenship or other legal status and are not on TPS.
A lawsuit delayed the Trump administration’s action. But a federal judge on Friday allowed it to move forward, citing a Supreme Court ruling earlier this summer that allowed the White House to end TPS for people from Haiti and Syria.
Among other issues, the plaintiffs seeking to stop the White House from ending TPS for people from Somalia alleged the move was racial discrimination. They pointed to comments made by President Donald Trump and others in his administration.
But in an order last Friday, U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs wrote that in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling, “which included a constitutional race-discrimination claim, the Court cannot discern a path to concluding that plaintiffs will succeed on the merits of this claim.”
That ruling means that people who came to the U.S. from Somalia on TPS — estimated at about 700 as of last year — could now have their permission to work and live here revoked.
An appeal of Burroughs’ order has been filed.
“This is a deeply disappointing ruling, but it is not the end of the legal challenge,” Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, said in a news release. “At a time when Somali Americans have faced sustained targeting and attacks from the Trump administration, this decision only deepens the fear and uncertainty facing our community.”
Hussein said that Somalia “represents precisely the kind of extraordinary conditions TPS was created to address.”
“Ending these protections sets a dangerous precedent that reaches far beyond Somali TPS holders and threatens the future and integrity of the entire TPS program,” he said.
