Judge allows immigrants with protected status to sue Trump administration

Victor Diaz, a temporary protected status holder, during a news conference and rally in San Francisco on May 7, 2018 to criticize the Trump administration's decision to end the program. Victor Diaz, a temporary protected status holder, during a news conference and rally in San Francisco on May 7, 2018 to criticize the Trump administration's decision to end the program. Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Judge allows immigrants with protected status to sue Trump administration 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

More than 200,000 people who were admitted to the United States after catastrophes in their home countries can try to prove that the Trump administration’s plans to deport them were motivated at least in part by the president’s racism, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled Friday.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen rejected the administration’s request to dismiss a lawsuit by former residents of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Sudan challenging the revocation of their Temporary Protected Status. That status, under a 1990 federal law, allows people fleeing disasters in their homelands to live and work in the U.S. under permits that are renewed every 18 months.

President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security says it decided to withdraw the protections because the hardships caused by the disasters — earthquakes in El Salvador and Haiti, a hurricane in Nicaragua and a civil war in Sudan — have ended. But the lawsuit contends the real motivation was racism, as demonstrated in January when Trump, during a White House meeting on Temporary Protected Status, asked why the United States was admitting so many people from “s—hole countries” such as Haiti and African nations.

A week later, the administration announced the termination of protected status for Haitians. Deportations to the four countries are scheduled between this November and September 2019.

A Justice Department lawyer argued at a hearing last Friday that Trump’s comments were irrelevant because the law assigned determinations of protected status not to the president, but to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and her predecessors, whose decisions were based entirely on conditions in those counties. But Chen said the allegations of racism, if proved, could infect the entire process.

Advocates have plausibly alleged “that President Trump made statements which a reasonable observer could construe as evidence of racial bias animus against non-white immigrants, and that he therefore influenced and tainted DHS’s decision-making process,” Chen said.

He rejected the Trump administration’s argument that courts have no authority to review the government’s decision to revoke protected status. The 1990 law bars review of the government’s selection or termination of any country in the program, but does not shield from judicial scrutiny the “policies and practices used in making such determinations,” Chen said.

Besides racial discrimination, the plaintiffs said the Trump administration illegally failed to state a reason for abruptly changing previous government policies, which had allowed people to retain protected status based on new hardships in their former homeland. Federal law requires an agency to provide a “reasoned explanation” for changing past policies or practices, Chen said, and Trump administration officials “have not provided such an explanation as they deny any change has occurred.”

He also said the plaintiffs may be able to show that the administration is violating the rights of the newcomers’ U.S.-born children by forcing them to choose between their parents and their country.

The next step is a hearing where the plaintiffs will ask Chen to block the deportations on the grounds that racism was at least one substantial reason for the decisions, said attorney Jessica Karp Bonsal of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

“Racial discrimination is not just another competing factor” that needs to be balanced against legitimate government policies, Bonsal said. “If that was a motivating factor, it violates the Constitution.”

She said the plaintiffs may also update the suit to add challenges to the revocation of protected status for people from Honduras and Nepal that the administration recently revoked. Suits filed elsewhere are also contesting those revocations.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the ruling.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko