This past Wednesday, a U.S. federal judge suspended the Trump Administration’s order to rescind the temporary protected status (TPS) of thousands of immigrants in San Francisco. The court ruling would protect most TPS recipients from Sudan, El Salvador, Haiti, and Nicaragua from deportation. Immigrants from these countries make up over 300,000 of all TPS recipients. 

The plaintiffs said the administration’s order was “influenced by the White House and based on animus against non-white, non-European immigrants.”

“If these children’s parents were not from countries the administration considers unworthy of humanity, we would not have to wage this fight,” Ahilan Arulanantham, senior counsel with the ALCU told the Los Angeles Times. “But we do, and we will not relent.”​

The National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, and the law firm of Sidley Austin LLP filed the class-action lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security on behalf of nine adult TPS recipients and five U.S. citizen children of TPS beneficiaries.

Judge Edward Chen agreed that the removal of TPS status would only harm immigrants’ livelihood in the long-term. Many of the TPS recipients who would be subject to removal have been in the U.S. for over a decade. Over 1,000 Sudanese immigrants would have been deported on Nov. 1st if the scheduled TPS repeal took place.

“Absent injunctive relief, TPS beneficiaries, and their children indisputably will suffer irreparable harm and great hardship,” Chen wrote in his ruling. “Many have U.S.-born children; those may be faced with the Hobson’s choice of bringing their children with them (and tearing them away from the only country and community they have known) or splitting their families apart.”

But the Justice Department is giving up. “The Justice Department completely rejects the notion that the White House or the Department of Homeland Security did anything improper,”spokesman Devin O’Malley, told reporters. “We will continue to fight for the integrity of our immigration laws and our national security.”