By Kaylee Pearlman
LOS ANGELES, CA – The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a petition for a rehearing en banc on behalf of “Temporary Protected Status” immigrants and their children, the ACLU announced.
Christina Morales, a 20 year TPS holder, who is also a leader in the National TPS alliance stated, “For five years, my family has faced a rollercoaster of emotions- from fear to terminations to elation from these court victories.”
Morales added, “we call on the Biden administration to return to the negotiating table and reach an agreement.”
The ACLU stated that the TPS holders and their children brought the case forward in 2018, “after former President Trump revoked protections for individuals from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan and later for Nepal and Honduras.”
Ahilan Arulanantham, who is counsel for the plaintiffs, commented, “ We should have never gotten to this point. President Biden had- and still has- every opportunity to fulfill his promise to protect the TPS-holder community.”
However, after Trump left, the Biden administration, “has since redesignated status for Haiti and Sudan…[but] has not extended the same protections for the other four countries,” according to the ACLU.
The conversations happened between the Biden administration and the TPS holders in October of 2022, and, according to the ACLU, “this left more than 300,000 TPS holders at risk of deportation and their children at risk of family separation.”
Jessica Bansal, legal director of Unemployed Workers United stated, “we continue to ask ourselves why President Biden is defending the Trump administration’s cruel TPS terminations.”
Bansal argued, “TPS holders are valued members of our community. The Biden administration should be supporting them, not defending Trump’s attempt to tear families apart.”
Emi MacLean, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, noted, “Hundreds of thousands of TPS holders should not live in limbo one day longer…President Biden must act immediately to undo Trump’s racist TPS terminations and guarantee protection for TPS holders.”
The plaintiffs in the case are being represented by the ACLU Foundations of Northern and Southern CA, the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, Unemployed Workers United, and the law firm Sidley Austin LLP.”
The coalition of organizations representing the TPS holders are, National TPS Alliance, Carecen Los Angeles, Adhikaar, Haitian Bridge Alliance and African Communities Together.”
