Donald Trump’s “shithole countries” slur did indeed come back to haunt him after all. Citing in part his numerous racist remarks, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen yesterday put a temporary hold on the administration’s termination of temporary protections for settled immigrants, in a victory for hundreds of thousands from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Sudan, as well as their U.S. citizen children.

Chen “found substantial evidence that the administration lacked ‘any explanation or justification’” to terminate Temporary Protected Status for these beneficiaries, The Washington Post reports, adding “there were ‘serious questions as to whether a discriminatory purpose was a motivating factor’ in the administration’s decision, which would violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.”

It doesn’t take a court to figure out that officials terminated these protections not because conditions had improved in immigrants’ home countries—they haven’t—but because Stephen Miller, the White House aide and white supremacist behind the administration’s mass deportation agenda, wanted them out. Even before Trump slurred Haiti and El Salvador as shitholes and wondered aloud why we weren’t importing more Norwegians, there was evidence officials were snooping into the lives of Haitian TPS recipients for any hints of criminality in order to justify deporting them.

As intended in the dead-eyed gaze of Miller, without immediate relief, TPS termination will spark the next family separation crisis.