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Judge stops Trump from ending protections for Cubans, others

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 20:36:37 +0000

FILE – Former President Donald Trump speaks at the New Hampshire Federation of Republican Women Lilac Luncheon, June 27, 2023, in Concord, N.H. Trump is already laying a sweeping set of policy goals should he win a second term as president. Priorities on the Republican’s agenda include a mass deportation operation, a new Muslim ban and tariffs on all imported goods. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

A federal judge in Massachusetts has blocked the “unlawful termination of humanitarian parole processes” by the Trump administration for more than a half-million Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who have been allowed to enter the United States and work under an umbrella of deportation protections.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani said in her order Monday that she was siding with immigrants from the four countries — who filed a lawsuit in late February and were seeking a temporary restraining order (TRO) with the groups Justice Action Center and Human Rights First — on account of President Donald Trump’s attempt to revoke “previously granted parole and work authorizations” for individuals currently living in the United States without a “case-by-case review,” which she said was an “unlawful action.”

“Plaintiffs were paroled into the United States by complying with the immigration processes made available to them,” wrote Talwani, a Barack Obama appointee, in a 41-page order filed in Boston.

“As lawful parolees, they did not have to fear arrest for being in the United States, were permitted to legally work if they received work authorization, and could apply for adjustment of status or other benefits while paroled into this country,” Talwani explained. “The immediate impact of the shortening of their grant of parole is to cause their lawful status in the United States to lapse early — in less than two weeks,” the judge said.

An estimated 110,240 Cubans, 211,040 Haitians, 117,330 Venezuelans and 93,070 Nicaraguans have come to the U.S. through the “CHVN” parole program for people from these countries, according to the Miami Herald. The newspaper reports that many of them have been living and working in South Florida after receiving sponsorship from relatives to apply for asylum and other protections.

One of the plaintiffs and immigrants suing President Donald Trump and the Trump administration, identified in pleadings as Lucia Doe, “works cleaning apartments, condominiums, houses, schools, and businesses,” per court filings.

The woman’s alleged plan when seeking parole was to use her two-year grant of parole to work as a way to “support her parents and to save money for the future,” as well as to pay back her sister for the money her sister spent helping Lucia Doe obtain a work permit and secure transportation to the United States, her lawyers say.

“She fears returning to Venezuela, where she says it is especially difficult to find employment over the age of 40,” Talwani said in her Monday order, citing the plaintiff’s prior declarations and allegations, as well as others who are suing. “She has been saving money in case she needs to purchase a last-minute ticket to Venezuela, as to avoid unlawful status in the United States,” Talwani said.

The woman’s attorneys wrote in their emergency TRO motion, which was filed on March 27 — in response to the Department of Homeland Security’s plans to revoke the humanitarian CHVN program on April 24 — that the Trump administration’s actions were “unprecedented” and would result in “hundreds of thousands of individuals losing lawful status and work authorization.”

Talwani said in her order that if their parole status was allowed to lapse later this month, the plaintiffs “will be faced with two unfavorable options: continue following the law and leave the country on their own, or await removal proceedings.”

If they choose to leave the country on their own, Talwani noted how they would allegedly “face dangers in their native countries, as set forth in their affidavits” — and for some, leaving would cause family separation and mean that the immigrants “will have forfeited any opportunity to obtain a remedy based on their APA claims, as leaving may moot those claims.”

“If, in the alternative, Plaintiffs remain in the United States and await removal proceedings, they may be subject to arrest and detention, they will no longer be authorized to work legally in this country and their opportunities to seek any adjustment of status will evaporate,” Talwani added.

The Trump administration has argued that the decision whether to terminate parole by Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, is ultimately “within the Secretary’s discretion” and that the defendants “will have the opportunity to renew their requests for immigration benefits” if placed in removal proceedings, according to Talwani’s order. But at a hearing last week, the Justice Department admitted that the plaintiffs would be unable to renew most of their immigration benefits if selected for removal, regardless of the circumstance.

“Even if Plaintiffs can renew requests for certain benefits, some requests may very well be denied simply because Plaintiffs would no longer be in lawful status,” Talwani said Monday. “Despite claiming Plaintiffs could renew requests in removal proceedings, Defendants: are defending the FRN, which states that the revoking of parole is designed to ensure expedited removal (thereby avoiding removal proceedings); and insist that Plaintiffs can be subjected to expedited removal proceedings while acknowledging, at a hearing before this court, that Plaintiffs could not renew most immigration benefits requests if placed in expedited proceedings.”

Talwani’s ruling comes as immigration and deportations continue to be a heated issue in the courts right now following President Trump’s decision to boot people under an 18th-century wartime authority.

Over the weekend, the Trump administration continued to defy an order from the U.S. Supreme Court instructing the government to provide details about the steps it had taken to “facilitate” the return of a Maryland resident mistakenly deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (AEA) to a notorious work prison in El Salvador. The Department of Justice asserted Sunday in court filings that under the high court’s order — which largely affirmed a lower-court ruling — it was not required to work with Salvadoran officials to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, so long as the government removed “any domestic obstacles” that would otherwise impede it from happening.

In a seven-page filing, the administration argued that federal courts do not have the authority to direct the administration to engage with the government of El Salvador at all, setting the stage for what is likely to be another eventual showdown at the Supreme Court. The Justice Department further asserted that interpreting the term “facilitate” to require any additional action on behalf of the administration would not be “tenable — or constitutional.”

Since last week, the government has refused to provide any additional information on Abrego Garcia’s status other than to notify a U.S. District Court in Maryland that he was alive and in El Salvador, despite the court requiring daily status reports regarding his return to the country.

In New York, the father of a 19-year-old man came forward this week and said he was allegedly detained by ICE agents in February and mistakenly deported to El Salvador under the AEA.

His dad, Wilmer Gutiérrez, told the nonprofit news outlet Documented that the agents who took his son, Merwil Gutiérrez, were allegedly informed by another person being detained that Merwil was the wrong person.

“The officers grabbed him and two other boys right at the entrance to our building,” Wilmer alleged. “One said, ‘No, he’s not the one,’ like they were looking for someone else. But the other said, ‘Take him anyway.’”

Trump on Saturday evening stated that the fate of Abrego Garcia and all of the “barbarians” deported without due process through the AEA was up to El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele.

On Monday, Trump met with Bukele at the White House and took questions about Abrego Garcia’s situation, per NPR.

Both he and Bukele tried claiming that their country’s hands were tied when pressed by reporters about why Abrego Garcia couldn’t be brought back to the United States.

“The question is preposterous,” Bukele said. “How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”

Asked why the U.S. wasn’t complying with the Supreme Court’s order, Trump told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: “How long do we have to answer this question? Why don’t you just say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that we’re keeping criminals out of our country?’ Why can’t you just say that?”

Love true crime? Sign up for our newsletter, The Law&Crime Docket, to get the latest real-life crime stories delivered right to your inbox.

Jerry Lambe contributed to this report.

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Appeals court stops Trump’s Hampton Dellinger fight

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 21:35:31 +0000

Left: President Donald Trump gives remarks during an event celebrating the 2024 Stanley Cup Champion the Florida Panthers in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC on Monday, February 3, 2025 (Photo by Aaron Schwartz/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images). Right: Hampton Dellinger (Office of Special Counsel).

A federal appeals court has rejected President Donald Trump‘s attempt to boot the Biden administration’s whistleblower advocate Hampton Dellinger from his post at the Office of Special Counsel, voting 2-1 to let him keep his job through a temporary restraining order (TRO) issued by a lower court judge. Trump’s Justice Department had asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to rule by noon Friday, saying it has “the opportunity to seek expeditious review” from the Supreme Court, should they be swatted down. The rejection came Saturday just before 11 p.m.

“The relief requested by the government is a sharp departure from established procedures that balance and protect the interests of litigants, and ensure the orderly consideration of cases before the district court and this court,” wrote judges Florence Pan and J. Michelle Childs in the late night ruling. “The government asks us to resolve disputed issues that plainly have not been finally adjudicated by the district court. The litigation of Dellinger’s motion for a preliminary injunction is ongoing … and that litigation raises issues that are overlapping, if not identical, to those that would be presented in an appeal of the TRO.”

Trump’s DOJ filed motions last week for an “immediate administrative stay” of the lower court’s TRO in both district and appeals court after it was granted by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson to allow Dellinger to keep his job while she weighs whether his firing by Trump on Feb. 7 was legal. The move came after Dellinger, who was appointed by Biden in February 2024 to enforce whistleblower laws, filed a lawsuit in the District of Columbia after being fired by the Trump administration “in a one-sentence email,” according to his federal complaint.

In its appeals motion, the DOJ said it was “unaware” of any other occasion in American history where a federal court has “purported to install a principal officer of the United States after the president has removed him — let alone to do so without finding that he was likely to prevail on the merits of his claim, as the district court did here.” The motion pointed to SCOTUS precedent as well as former President Joe Biden’s own 2021 firing of Andrew Saul, who was social security commissioner at the time, as reasons for slapping down the lifeline Jackson tossed to Dellinger last week.

In a 12-page dissent to the Saturday ruling, U.S. Circuit Judge Greg Katsas — a Trump appointee — said he believes the president “is immune from injunctions directing the performance of his official duties, and Article II of the Constitution grants him the power to remove agency heads.” Katsas argued that “the extraordinary character of the order at issue here” is the fact that it directs the president to “recognize and work” with an agency head whom he has already removed, which warrants “immediate” appellate review.

“The TRO unjustifiably intrudes into a core institutional prerogative of the President, while Dellinger’s modest individual injury could be remedied in an action for backpay,” the dissenting judge wrote. “An injunction preventing the President from firing an agency head —and thus controlling how he performs his official duties — is virtually unheard of. And in any event, Article II of the Constitution empowers the President to remove the head of an agency with a single top officer.”

In their ruling, Pan and Childs said they felt that it was ultimately the lower court’s job to decide whether Dellinger was allowed to keep his job through the TRO issued by Jackson, a 2011 Barack Obama appointee, on account of TRO’s “ordinarily” not being an appealable order. “The government asks us to make an exception and hear its appeal because the TRO ‘works an extraordinary harm’ and is set to last for 14 days,” the judges note.

The government had requested that the appeals court “construe its stay motion as a petition for a writ of mandamus and grant the petition,” which the judges said would have the same effect of reversing the TRO. “The government filed its appeal and stay motion on the evening of February 12, 2025, and requested a ruling from this court within two days, by noon on February 14, 2025, so that the Acting Solicitor General ‘has the opportunity to seek expeditious review from the Supreme Court if this Court denies relief,”” the judges explained.

“Instead of entertaining an emergency appeal of a TRO, the normal course would be for us to wait for the district court to issue a ruling on the preliminary injunction, which would be immediately appealable,” the pair concluded. “Indeed, many of the issues raised in the stay motion will be addressed by the district court at the preliminary-injunction hearing on February 26, 2025. The district court has promised to issue its preliminary-injunction ruling with ‘extreme expedition.’”

In district court, Trump’s DOJ claimed last week that Dellinger had not established how he will suffer irreparable harm if Jackson’s TRO is stayed pending an appeal. “A stay is not necessary to prevent any cognizable harm to plaintiff,” the DOJ’s motion said.

In his complaint, Dellinger claims that by firing him from the Office of Special Counsel, the Trump administration “jeopardized” the functioning of an agency designed to stop exactly that. The DOJ, however, insists that OSC can function just fine without Dellinger in charge.

“To the extent Plaintiff asserts irreparable harm to the functioning of OSC itself, that assertion is misplaced,” the department’s district court motion said last week. “Both because OSC can continue to function with an Acting Special Counsel (who had already assumed Plaintiff’s role before the district court’s order) and because Plaintiff would lack standing to raise such a harm.”

Dellinger, 57, was appointed by Biden to serve a five-year term before he was fired by Trump. His termination and lawsuit came less than a week after an employee of the National Labor Relations Board, an independent federal agency that enforces labor laws and protects workers’ rights to organize, sued Trump after being axed in January in similar fashion.

A group of federal watchdogs who got booted from their posts last month have also teamed up to sue the Trump administration — saying the firings violated “unambiguous federal statutes” — in a joint legal bid to get their jobs back.

The group of watchdogs suing the Trump administration includes former Department of Defense inspector general Robert Storch; former Department of Veterans Affairs IG Michael Missal; former Department of Health and Human Services IG Christi Grimm; former State Department IG Cardell Richardson; former Department of Education IG Sandra Bruce; former Department of Agriculture IG Phyllis Fong; former Labor Department IG Larry Turner; and Small Business Administration IG Michael Ware.

Last Monday, the White House reported that Cathy Harris — who is on the three-member Merit Systems Protection Board, which protects terminated federal workers from “partisan political and other prohibited personnel practices,” according to its government website — was being fired, along with its vice chair Ray Limon. Harris responded to her termination with a lawsuit as well, calling it “unlawful” and having “no basis in fact.”

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