For Immediate Release // Please Excuse Cross Posting
June 22nd 2018
Contact: Armando Carmona, NDLON, 323-250-3018, armando@ndlon.org; ACLU SoCal Communications & Media Advocacy, 213-977-5252, communications@aclusocal.org

TPS Holders and Their Children Confront Trump Administration in Court Over Efforts to Terminate Long-Held Legal Status

Government Seeks to Dismiss Lawsuit Amid Anti-immigrant Fervor & Family Separation

San Francisco, CA – On Friday, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco will hold the first hearing in a lawsuit brought by TPS holders and their US citizen children against the federal government’s effort to terminate Temporary Protected Status for more than 200,000 people living lawfully in the United States. The plaintiffs are represented by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, and Sidley Austin LLP.

The plaintiffs have argued that the Trump Administration’s termination of TPS for people from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan violates the constitutional rights of TPS holders and their children.

“After decades living in the United States, my family has been upended by the decision to terminate TPS,” said Cristina Morales, a TPS holder from El Salvador who is, along with her daughter Crista, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, Ramos v. Nielsen. “We have taken the government to court because what they are doing to us – and hundreds of thousands of others – is not just wrong, but also illegal.”

“The Trump Administration’s decision to end temporary protected status for over 200,000 people based on the President’s racist views of TPS-holders is morally repugnant. It’s also unconstitutional” said Jessica Bansal, Litigation Director at the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

“Forcing these school-aged U.S. citizen children to choose between exile from their country and separation from their parents is not only cruel, but also unconstitutional,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, Legal Director at the ACLU of Southern California.

Benjamin Zepeda, a US citizen child of two TPS holders who lives in Los Angeles, said “I joined with other young people—and with my dad—to fight this case because I cannot let the government take my parents away from me.”

Today’s hearing concerns the government’s efforts to dismiss the case. As the plaintiffs wrote in opposing the government’s motion, “In [the government’s] view, even if Government officials flipped a coin to determine whether to end TPS—or wrote explicitly … that they were ending TPS because they did not want ‘people from shithole countries’ (and their children) living here—the federal courts could do nothing. Defendants’ view is not the law.”

This case challenges the termination of TPS for four countries–El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Sudan–and is brought on behalf of TPS holders and their U.S. citizen children.

Today’s events are as follows:

Friday June 22nd
9:30am (Press Conference) at (450 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco, CA)
10:30am (Court Hearing — Courtroom 5 – 17th Floor)

For more information visit: https://www.savetps.com/lawsuit

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