Supreme Court to weigh deportation protections for Syria, Haiti

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to review the Trump administration’s effort to remove deportation protections for immigrants from Syria and Haiti, the latest in a series of emergency cases over Trump’s sprawling immigration enforcement effort.

Lower courts had prevented the administration from revoking the temporary protected status designations from some immigrants who came to the U.S. from the two countries.

In the order Monday, the Supreme Court left those lower court rulings in place and agreed to hear arguments over the legality of the administration’s effort to revoke those protections on April 27.

According to court filings, the decision could impact more than 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians currently living legally in the United States. The justices will likely issue a decision in the case before the close of the court’s term at the end of June.

The TPS program, created in 1990, allows the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to designate countries where it is too dangerous for immigrants to return home, according to the DHS website. When Trump took office for the start of his second term, the Biden administration had provided protections for immigrants from more than a dozen countries.

Parallel to the attention-grabbing immigration crackdowns in Minneapolis and other cities, Trump has sought to revoke the legal protections for lawful immigrants from Syria, Haiti and other countries.

In the past, the justices have allowed the administration to remove TPS designations without explanation, such as in May of last year when the justices allowed DHS to remove deportation protections for more than 300,000 Venezuelans in the United States.

The Supreme Court is considering several other immigration enforcement cases this term, including the legality of the “metering” policy at the Mexican border meant to prevent asylum claims.

—CQ-Roll Call

University of Florida sued by College Republicans for deactivating club over Nazi salute

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The University of Florida’s College Republicans chapter filed a federal lawsuit Monday accusing the university of violating the First Amendment after administrators abruptly shut down the student group last week over antisemitic remarks attributed to one of its members.

In the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Gainesville, the student organization argues the university unlawfully “deactivated and shut down” the club in retaliation for protected political speech. The suit seeks an emergency court order forcing the university to reinstate the organization and restore its access to campus facilities, funding and event privileges.

The College Republicans are asking a federal judge to declare the university’s action unconstitutional and award damages and legal fees.

UF announced on Saturday that it was deactivating the student club because “members engaged in a pattern of conduct that violated its rules and values, including a recent antisemitic gesture.” An image of a club member performing a Nazi salute had been circulating social media last week.

The university also cited a recent resolution by the Florida Federation of Young Republicans — the collegiate arm of the state Republican Party — to dissolve and “reorganize” the group. The UF chapter, however, has said it is not affiliated with the state organization.

None of UF’s public comments about the situation identify any specific remarks made by College Republicans members.

The dispute is unfolding on a campus that’s home to one of the largest Jewish student communities in the country. UF is widely considered to have the largest undergraduate Jewish student population in the United States, with thousands of Jewish students and a robust network of Jewish campus organizations.

—Miami Herald

Trump administration's dismantling of Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research is illegal, universities allege in new lawsuit

DENVER — A consortium of universities filed a lawsuit Monday to stop the Trump administration’s planned dismantling of Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research, alleging that the planned reorganization violates the Constitution and federal law.

The plaintiff is the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a nonprofit consortium of 129 North American universities that manages NCAR on behalf of the National Science Foundation. UCAR sued several federal agencies and their leaders in Colorado’s federal court.

The administration’s plans to neuter NCAR are part of a “campaign of retaliation” against Colorado’s state government and its leaders for maintaining mail-in voting and refusing, so far, to grant clemency to Tina Peters, a former county clerk and Trump ally convicted of felonies in an election misconduct case, the lawsuit alleges.

“These actions pose a direct threat to national security, public safety, and economic prosperity and risk setting back the country’s global leadership in weather and space weather modeling and forecasting,” leaders from the university group wrote in a news release announcing the litigation. “We are hopeful that this lawsuit will prevent future unlawful action by the agencies.”

The Trump administration first announced its intention to “break up” NCAR in December, with a top budget official calling it “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.”

While the institute investigates climate change, its mission is much broader and encompasses every aspect of how the earth’s atmosphere and weather systems interact. That includes research on earthquakes, flooding, drought, geomagnetic storms in space, wildfires, wind, storms and more.

The center provides the data and models that other institutions and universities rely on for forecasting and research. Industries like aviation, agriculture and shipping also rely on its information to make decisions.

About 820 employees work for NCAR, approximately half of whom live in the Boulder area and work at the center’s iconic building perched on a hill on the edge of town.

—The Denver Post

Havana will allow Cubans in Miami, elsewhere to own businesses, trade minister says

After decades of being stripped of many of their rights for leaving the country, Cubans living in Miami and elsewhere will be able to invest and own private businesses on the island, the country’s deputy prime minister said Monday, confirming earlier reporting by the Miami Herald.

Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga told NBC News Monday morning that “Cuba is open to having a fluid commercial relationship with U.S. companies” and “also with Cubans residing in the United States and their descendants.”

“This extends beyond the commercial sphere,” said Pérez-Oliva, who is a grandnephew of Fidel and Raúl Castro and is also Cuba’s minister of foreign trade and investment. “It also applies to investments — not only small investments, but also large investments, particularly in infrastructure.”

On Friday, the Miami Herald reported that Cuban authorities were expected to announce measures leading to an economic opening, including for Cuban nationals abroad to own business on the island.

The announcement comes after the island’s hand-picked president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, admitted Friday that Cuba is indeed in talks with the Trump administration, weeks after the Miami Herald broke news that members of Secretary of State Marco Rubio had met Raúl Castro’s grandson in St. Kitts in February. The grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, was seated in the audience in a government meeting in which Díaz-Canel first disclosed the talks and later in a press conference on Friday, even though Rodriguez-Castro has no official title.

A source with knowledge of the conversations who asked not be identified to speak of the sensitive issue said Cuba’s move to allow Cuban Americans to own property and invest on the island — a major concession that Cuban leaders have been resisting for decades — is a direct response to the increasing pressure by the Trump administration to make reforms on the communist-run island.

“This is historical change,” said Hugo Cancio, a Miami businessman and owner of Katapulk, an online supermarket that delivers groceries on the island. Cancio has long advocated for the right of Cubans abroad to take part in the country’s economic life. “That’s been my focus for more than 20 years: explaining to the Cuban government that the diaspora is Cuba’s most important asset, not just because we have the know-how, the capital, but because we need to be part of the Cuban nation and we need to get back those rights we lost when we emigrated.”

—Miami Herald