US judge prolongs deportation protections for nationals of Myanmar

By Serdar Dincel

ISTANBUL (AA) - A US federal judge has barred the Trump administration from ending deportation protections for over 3,600 Myanmar migrants in the US, reported local media

Judge Matthew Kennelly, serving in the state of Illinois, said in a 57-page opinion that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's decision to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Myanmar nationals failed to adequately consider conditions in Myanmar, where a years-long internal ethnic conflict has caused widespread violence and displacement.

Kennelly wrote that while Noem defended the termination by claiming conditions in Myanmar had improved sufficiently to allow deportations, other Trump administration officials reported "violence against civilians including airstrikes, shelling, and razing of villages, human trafficking, and dire humanitarian need” in the strife-torn country.

It is more likely that the special status was ended to advance Noem's "broader goal of curtailing immigration and eliminating T.P.S. generally, not on her evaluation of changed conditions in Burma," argued the judge, using an older name for Myanmar.

Since a 2021 coup, the nation of over 54 million people has been ravaged by internal ethnic conflict involving armed groups and the military, leaving thousands dead and over 3.5 million displaced.