US judge blocks Trump admin from stripping immigrants of work permits
BOSTON: A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from stripping tens of thousands of asylum seekers and immigrants who have Temporary Protected Status of their ability to work in the United States. US District...
A federal judge in Boston has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from taking away work permits from tens of thousands of asylum seekers and immigrants with Temporary Protected Status, according to a monitored public feed citing Dawn World.
US District Judge Nathaniel Gorton on Tuesday sided with immigrant rights groups and labor unions that challenged a set of policies aimed at carrying out new immigration restrictions enacted by Congress last year. His order prevents the government from moving ahead for now while he considers whether to impose a longer pause. He said he plans to rule on that question by August 5.
The dispute centers on provisions in President Donald Trump’s signature tax and spending law, passed by the Republican-led Congress in July 2025, which for the first time imposed fees on asylum applications and limited employment authorization for people with Temporary Protected Status, or TPS. TPS is a humanitarian designation that allows people from countries affected by war, natural disaster or other crises to live and work in the United States while it is unsafe for them to return home.
The administration has been pushing to end TPS for people from more than a dozen countries as part of Trump’s hardline immigration agenda. Last month, the US Supreme Court allowed that effort to proceed in the case of thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants.
In the lawsuit brought by the liberal legal group Democracy Forward, the plaintiffs argued that US Citizenship and Immigration Services unlawfully put the new law into effect and that its policies should be halted. They said one of the challenged measures could have caused thousands of TPS holders from El Salvador, Sudan and Ukraine to lose their work authorization starting Wednesday.
The plaintiffs also said the agency improperly shortened the period during which some TPS holders would be allowed to work by applying the 2025 law retroactively to people from those countries. Another part of the challenge was that the public was not given notice and a chance to comment before the policies were adopted, which the groups said was required under the Administrative Procedure Act.
Democracy Forward president and CEO Skye Perryman said in a statement that the ruling would protect thousands of families from losing their livelihoods while the courts weigh the legality of the administration’s policies.
Gorton did not block the agency from collecting the fee for now. However, he said USCIS cannot strip work permits from people who do not pay it or impose other penalties while the order remains in effect.
TPS for El Salvador is currently valid through September 9, while protections for Sudan and Ukraine run through October 19, after extensions announced in January.
This report is based on a monitored public feed and is attributed to Dawn World.
Source: Dawn World - https://www.dawn.com/news/2017422/us-judge-blocks-trump-admin-from-stripping-immigrants-of-work-permits
