A win for immigrant protections — but clock still ticks

“Color is neither a poison nor a crime.”

That’s the powerful declaration from US District Judge Trina L. Thompson for the Northern District of California, who on Thursday sided with roughly 63,000 immigrants from Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua facing the loss of their right to stay in the United States under a new directive from the Trump administration. In her ruling, Thompson temporarily blocked the terminations, saying the government may have acted unlawfully and with racial prejudice.

But while the court’s decision delivers a searing rebuke of the administration and provisional relief, the ruling is just that — a pause. Thompson’s order preserves the protections, known as Temporary Protected Status, only until a full trial in November, underscoring the precarious reality facing thousands of families who still live with the threat of losing their homes, jobs, health care, and stability at any moment. The struggle for permanent security — free from political whims and shifting policies — remains painfully unfinished.

Get The Gavel

A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr.

The program allows people whose home countries have experienced natural disasters, war, or civil strife to live in the United States and apply for work permits. Ending the protections is supposed to be based on whether it’s safe to return, but the Trump administration seems intent on revoking it out of racism and spite.

Thompson’s 37-page ruling is a scathing indictment of those efforts. Her line about color is in direct response to President Trump and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s inflammatory, dehumanizing statements equating immigrants with criminals, gang members, and terrorists, often explicitly targeting immigrants from non-white, non-European countries. Case in point: Trump’s infamous “poisoning the blood” rhetoric.

“The freedom to live fearlessly, the opportunity of liberty, and the American dream,” Thompson wrote. “That is all Plaintiffs seek. Instead, they are told to atone for their race, leave because of their names, and purify their blood. The Court disagrees.”

One of the plaintiffs is Maria Elena Hernandez, a Nicaraguan immigrant who arrived in the United States nearly three decades ago. She was visiting her brothers in Florida when Hurricane Mitch devastated Nicaragua, prompting the US government to grant temporary protected status to Nicaraguans who were in the United States at the time.

“We are not criminals, we are not illegal, we are not undocumented, and we work legally with the permit that TPS gives us,” Hernandez, 67, told me in an interview. She has worked as a janitor in a Florida university for the past 18 years. “We contribute economically because we have always paid our taxes. We have always respected the laws of this country and have always lived with the promise that if our countries are not safe, they will protect us here.”

Jackey Baiza, who came to the United States from Honduras at age 2, spoke during a rally in solidarity with TPS holders from Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua during a vigil on July 29 in Boston.Danielle Parhizkaran/Globe Staff

Thompson’s ruling also acknowledges the broader consequences of terminating Temporary Protected Status. Many of the plaintiffs, she noted, are “long-standing employees” who have built lives and livelihoods over decades in the US. “Termination of TPS for Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua will result in a $1.4 billion loss to the United States economy,” the federal judge wrote.

Hernandez said she decided to join the lawsuit because she wanted to fight the Trump administration’s unjust attempts to end the program. “It would be very devastating for me” to move back to Nicaragua, she told me, “not only because it would separate me from my family, but also because I would lose my Social Security, to which I have contributed for so many years, and my health insurance, which I need so much because I have chronic asthma and a heart condition.”

Lest we forget, the US government itself has deemed Nicaragua an unsafe country for Americans to visit due to increasing authoritarianism. “I see this great contradiction,” Hernandez said. “Now the government is saying the country is safe for us. Right now there is major political instability in Nicaragua. Of course it is very unsafe to travel there.”

The fight to preserve the protections is far from over, but the reality is grim. The Trump administration seems intent in decimating the program, which as of Sept. 30 was protecting more than 1 million immigrants from 17 countries. That includes half a million Haitians, for whom the protections will end in February of next year. And two months ago, the US Supreme Court upheld Trump’s authority to end temporary protected status for more than 300,000 Venezuelans.

Still, for Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy organization based in Southern California, it is vital to highlight Thompson’s ruling as a powerful affirmation that “our communities matter,” she said in an interview.

Indeed, Thompson’s ruling offers a clear-eyed assessment of what’s really driving the push to end temporary protections: It isn’t national security; it’s racialized fear. Unless Congress steps in with a permanent solution (here’s hoping against hope) decades of contribution and belonging can still be wiped out with the stroke of a pen.

Marcela García is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at marcela.garcia@globe.com. Follow her on X @marcela_elisa and on Instagram @marcela_elisa.