Court rules Trump can remove protected status from immigrants from Cameroon and Afghanistan

Court gives Trump green light to end temporary protections for immigrants from Cameroon and Afghanistan despite legal challenges from immigration advocacy groups.

An appellate court in the United States has ruled that the Trump Administration can end a program that grants temporary deportation protections to more than 10,000 people from Afghanistan and Cameroon. 

Temporary protected status, or TPS, allows people to stay and work in the US if their home countries are deemed unsafe due to natural disasters or war. 

The government argued that the TPS program is intended to be temporary and Cameroon and Afghanistan are now safe enough for people to return. 

Around 11,700 Afghans and 5,200 Cameroonians are enrolled in TPS, the government estimates. But roughly 3,600 of the Afghans and 200 of the Cameroonians have green cards, so they will not be affected. Those who lose their TPS protections can apply for asylum or some other form of legal status, but otherwise, they will be at risk of deportation. 

'Racial animus'

The Trump administration has sought to wind down TPS for hundreds of thousands of other migrants from Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti.  

Last week a flight arrived in Haiti from Florida carrying 95 people deported from the US. In June, the Department of Homeland Security terminated legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians, setting them up for potential deportation. 

One month earlier, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end TPS for Venezuelan migrants and hundreds were deported to El Salvador where they were held in a high-security prison.  

On Friday, more than 250 Venezuelans returned home in exchange for 10 Americans held in Venezuela.  

Immigration advocacy group CASA sued the administration in an effort to block the removal of TPS. It says the move is illegal and based partly on "racial animus" - "deporting people from predominantly non-white countries while removing immigration barriers to people from countries the Administration believes are predominately white."