A federal judge in the US ordered the Trump administration on Wednesday to lift its pause on various immigration applications, stating that allowing hundreds of thousands of immigrants to lose legal status is against the public interest.

US District Judge Indira Talwani’s ruling protects many immigrants from Afghanistan, Latin America, Ukraine, and other countries whose legal right to live and work in the US had been threatened by the Trump administration’s measures.

The ruling centers on immigration programs using parole, a legal mechanism for temporary entry on humanitarian or public interest grounds, which Trump officials sought to restrict, accusing the former Biden administration of overuse.

In April, Talwani issued a similar ruling protecting a key parole program that allowed over 500,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to live and work legally in the US, a program also impacted by the pause.

"This court emphasizes, as it did in its prior order, that it is not in the public interest to manufacture a circumstance in which hundreds of thousands of individuals will, over the course of several months, become unlawfully present in the country, such that these individuals cannot legally work in their communities or provide for themselves and their families," Talwani said in the order.

Talwani stated that the Trump administration’s broad effort to revoke protections from those already granted status marked a significant escalation that would lead to widespread disruption.(Americas)