By Nate Raymond
May 1 (Reuters) – A federal judge on Friday blocked U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration from moving ahead next week with its plans to end temporary legal protections that have allowed nearly 3,000 people from Yemen to live and work in the United States.
U.S. District Judge Dale Ho in Manhattan issued the order at the behest of a group of Yemeni nationals who had sued over the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s decision to strip them effective Monday of the Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, they had been previously granted.
He issued the ruling just two days after the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court took up the administration’s appeal of similar rulings that have prevented it from ending the same type of humanitarian protections that had been granted to more than 350,000 people from Haiti and 6,100 from Syria.
TPS under federal law is available to people whose home countries have experienced natural disasters, armed conflicts or other extraordinary events. It provides eligible migrants with work authorization and temporary protection from deportation.
The administration has sought as part of Trump’s hardline immigration agenda to terminate the TPS designations for 13 countries, only to be stymied by repeated rulings by judges who have largely blocked its efforts to do so.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama )
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