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With their lives hanging in the balance, eight Haitian and Salvadoran Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients have sued the Trump administration, arguing that Donald Trump’s decision to end their protections—Haiti’s by July 2019 and El Salvador’s later that year in September—“violates their constitutional rights” and “was impermissibly infected by invidious discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, and/or national origin and therefore cannot stand”:
This is the second TPS-related lawsuit filed in recent weeks. Last month, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in a suit asked a federal judge in the U.S. District Court of Maryland to reverse the decision to end the humanitarian protections for nearly 60,000 Haitian immigrants. That suit argues that Acting Homeland Secretary Elaine Duke’s November decision to end TPS for Haiti as of July 2019 is “irrational and discriminatory” and influenced by President Trump’s “public hostility toward immigrants of color.”
“Everyone is keenly aware of the racist bigotry that has characterized the Trump administration’s immigration policies,” said Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice’s Oren Nimni, which filed the suit. Past judges have have already “cited the president's tweets about Muslims ... as evidence that his decision to ban most travelers from countries that are home to 150 million Muslims was based on religious animus.” Trump’s decision to end TPS for El Salvador and Haiti affects over 250,000 immigrants who have lived in the U.S. legally, have U.S. citizen kids, and have paid taxes here for decades:
Juan Carlos Vidal, 35, a Salvadoran businessman who is among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said he wants to save TPS for himself and his family. A TPS recipient since 2001, Vidal lives in Revere, Massachusetts, and worked his way up from kitchen assistant to chef at a restaurant before opening four restaurants of his own in the Boston area. He employs more than 20 U.S. citizens, his lawyers say.
“Like scores of other TPS beneficiaries from across the country, our clients have called America home for years now. The Trump administration wants to round them up and tear families apart,” said Oren Sellstrom of Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice. Trump was offered a bipartisan immigration plan that involved protections for TPS recipients, but he instead dismissed it during his infamous “shithole countries” rant. “I feel attacked,” Vidal said. “I feel discriminated [against] because I know I contribute to the nation’s economy and the president doesn’t respect or value my contributions.”