In August, some of us expressed doubts over the ruling of San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson enjoining an effort to end Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for migrants from different countries, citing sufficient racial animus. Now, a unanimous panel just stayed that order in a major win for the Trump Administration, which will now be allowed to revoke deportation protections for citizens from Nicaragua, Nepal, and Honduras.

A panel composed of Circuit Judge Michael Hawkins (a Clinton appointee), Circuit Judge Consuelo Callahan (George W. Bush appointee), and Circuit Judge Eric Miller (Trump appointee) ruled that the district court erred in its injunction.

The decision follows the Supreme Court’s recent order to stay lower court orders blocking the termination of TPS for Venezuela.

Notably, the program was meant to be “temporary,” but judges such as Judge Thompson have treated it as effectively permanent with these injunctions. The TPS for Nicaragua was issued in 1999, over a quarter of a century ago.

The allegation of racial animus is hard to square with the overall effort of the Administration to not only end TPS programs but to carry out its promised mass deportation of those who came into the country illegally regardless of their country of origin.

The panel acknowledged the obvious in ruling against the district court given the recent Supreme Court decision:

We are not writing on a blank slate, however, because the Supreme Court has twice stayed district court orders blocking the Secretary’s vacatur of TPS for Venezuela. See Noem v. National TPS All., 146 S. Ct. 23 (2025); Noem v. National TPS All., 145 S. Ct. 2728 (2025). Those orders contained no reasoning, so they do not inform our analysis of the legal issues in this case, and the issues in any event are not identical. But the stay applications involved similar assertions of harm by both parties, and we have been admonished that the Court’s stay orders must inform “how [we] should exercise [our] equitable discretion in like cases.” Trump v. Boyle, 145 S. Ct. 2653, 2654 (2025). We therefore conclude that the equitable factors favor a stay.

As I discussed earlier, the judicial efforts to enjoin the ending of TPS programs actually work against future such programs. Presidents can now see that allowing immigrants into the country temporarily can be treated as granting a permanent status.

The same is true with the equally dubious rulings of judges such as District Judge Indira Talwani in preventing President Donald Trump from canceling a Biden program granting parole and the right to work to immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV).

It also raises more questions about recent rulings, such as Judge Ana C. Reyes’s in Washington. I criticized her decision last week in denying the termination of the TPS program.

The Ninth Circuit decision reflects a pattern of reversals for these district court judges in seeking to block the Trump Administration’s efforts to deport the millions of individuals admitted into the country under the Biden and earlier administrations.