Immigrant rights advocates filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to stop U.S. President\u00a0Donald \u200bTrump’s\u00a0administration from next week ending legal protections that allow nearly 1,100 Somalis to live and \u200cwork in the United States.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0lawsuit, brought by four Somalis and two advocacy groups, challenges the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status for Somali immigrants, whom Trump has\u00a0derided in public remarks.<\/p>\n
Outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in January announced that TPS \u200bfor Somalis would end on March 17, arguing that Somalia’s conditions had improved,\u00a0despite fighting continuing\u00a0between Somali forces \u200band al-Shabaab militants.<\/p>\n
The plaintiffs, who include the groups African Communities Together and Partnership for the \u2060Advancement of New Americans, in the lawsuit filed in Boston federal court argue the move was procedurally flawed and \u200bdriven by a discriminatory, predetermined agenda.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit cites a series of statements Trump has made describing Somalis as “garbage” and “low \u200bIQ people” who “contribute nothing.”<\/p>\n
The plaintiffs said the administration is ending TPS for Somalia and other countries due to unconstitutional bias against non-white immigrants, not based on objective assessments of country conditions.<\/p>\n
“The termination of TPS for Somalia is racism masking as immigration policy,” Omar Farah, executive \u200bdirector at the legal group Muslim Advocates, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
DHS did not respond to a request for comment. It has \u200bpreviously said TPS was “never intended to be a de facto amnesty program.”<\/p>\n
TPS is a form of humanitarian immigration protection that shields eligible \u200cmigrants \u2060from deportation and allows them to work. Under Noem, DHS has moved to end TPS for a dozen countries, sparking legal challenges.<\/p>\n
The administration on Saturday\u00a0announced plans\u00a0to pursue an appeal at the U.S. Supreme Court in order to end TPS for over 350,000 Haitians. It also\u00a0wants the high court\u00a0to allow it to end TPS for about 6,000 Syrians.<\/p>\n
SOMALI COMMUNITY \u200bTARGETED<\/strong><\/p>\n Somalia was first designated for \u200bTPS in 1991, with \u2060its latest extension in 2024. About 1,082 Somalis currently hold TPS, and 1,383 more have pending applications, according to DHS.<\/p>\n Somalis in Minnesota in recent months had become a target of \u200bTrump’s immigration crackdown, with officials pointing to a fraud scandal in which many people \u200bcharged come from \u2060the state’s large Somali community.<\/p>\n The Trump administration cited those fraud allegations as a basis for a\u00a0months-long immigration enforcement surge\u00a0in Democratic-led Minnesota, during which about 3,000 immigration agents were deployed, spurring protests and leading to the killing of two U.S. citizens by \u2060federal agents.<\/p>\n In \u200bNovember, Trump announced he would end TPS for Somalis in Minnesota, \u200band a month later said he wanted them sent “back to where they came from.”<\/p>\n The U.S. Department of State advises against traveling to Somalia, citing crime \u200band civil unrest among numerous factors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Immigrant rights advocates filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to stop U.S. President\u00a0Donald \u200bTrump’s\u00a0administration from next week ending legal protections that allow nearly 1,100 Somalis to live and \u200cwork in the United States. The\u00a0lawsuit, brought by four Somalis and two advocacy groups, challenges the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":20127,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":6,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,33],"tags":[1643,189],"class_list":["post-20126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-politics","tag-donald-trump","tag-somalia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20128,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20126\/revisions\/20128"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}