Appeals court pauses an order that had protected status for Nepalese, Hondurans and Nicaraguans.
A United States appeals court has sided with the Trump administration and halted, for now, a lower court’s order that had kept in place temporary protections for 60,000 migrants from Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal.
In a decision issued on Wednesday, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco granted an emergency stay pending an appeal. Immigrant rights advocates allege that the administration acted unlawfully in ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations for people from Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal.
This decision means that the Republican administration can move towards removing an estimated 7,000 people from Nepal whose TPS designations expired on August 5. The TPS designations and legal status of 51,000 Hondurans and 3,000 Nicaraguans are set to expire September 8, at which point they will become eligible for removal.
“The district court’s order granting plaintiffs’ motion to postpone, entered July 31, 2025, is stayed pending further order of this court,” wrote the judges.
In July, a district judge ordered that the termination of the TPS be halted until November, when a hearing on the merits is scheduled. In her ruling, she found that the plaintiffs would suffer “irreparable harm” by the hasty termination, but also noted that the broader public would be impacted both economically and socially by the loss to the labour force and community.
The brief decision issued on Wednesday did not give a reason, and in a statement, UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy co-director Ahilan Arulanantham said there appeared to be a lack of due process.
“The court’s failure to provide any reasoning for its decision, including why this was an ‘emergency,’ falls far short of what due process requires and our clients deserve.”
TPS allows nationals from countries facing conflict, natural disaster or other extraordinary circumstances to temporarily remain in the US. It also gives them the right to work and travel.
The Trump administration has aggressively sought to remove the protection, thus making more people eligible for removal. It is part of a wider effort by the administration to carry out mass deportations of immigrants.
Since taking office, the administration has sought to remove protections for Afghans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Cameroonians – despite troubling conditions in their home countries.