Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Plan Hits Brick Wall After Federal Judge Steps In

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

A California federal judge, citing Trump’s and Kristi Noem’s statements showing illegal hatred and prejudice against the Venezuelan people, has entered a Nationwide Injunction to stop the deportation of Venezuelans here legally under Biden’s extension of their Temporary Protected Status, finding that if they are returned to their unsafe country that Trump declared to be controlled by drug terrorist gangs, they may face certain death. Michael Popok explains how Noem’s and Trump’s own statements of hatred were used by the judge to support his ruling, including the infamous “they are eating our cats and dogs” debate statement by Trump. Head to https://www.fast-growing-trees.com/collections/sale?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=legalaf right now to get 15% off your entire order with code LegalAF! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Okay, flights on Air Canada. How about Prague? Ooh, Paris. Those gardens. Gardens. Um, Amsterdam. Tulip Festival. I see your festival and raise you a carnival in Venice. Or Bermuda has carnaval. Ooh, colorful. You want colorful. Thailand. Lantern Festival. Boom. Book it. Um, how did we get to Thailand from Prague?

Oh, right. Prague. Oh, boy. Choose from a world of destinations, if you can. Air Canada, nice travels. We have a federal judge in San Francisco that finds that the decision by the Trump administration and the Homeland Security Director, Christine Noem, is so infected by prejudice and animus towards the Venezuelan people living in America lawfully under temporary protective status, that Gnome's decision to end the temporary protective status

for over 350,000 law-abiding, hard-working, tax-paying Venezuelans living under our good graces here in the United States needs to be reversed and blocked and enjoined and a nationwide injunction to stop it in its tracks. That's the ruling that we just received out of San Francisco from Edward Chen. I'm Michael Popak, Euron Legal AF and the Midas Touch Network. Let me get to the new order and why it is so important. First of all, let me give you the highlights. It's a nationwide injunction. It applies to all Venezuelans living here under temporary protective status. It could, by extension, also one day apply to the millions of people who are here from 17 different countries under temporary protective status, a program

in which the United States spreads its wings of grace and allows people to remain in this country if where they are from is wracked by civil strife or by natural disaster. That sums up Venezuela since the Maduro regime started in 2013. Seven million Venezuelans have fled the country. In fact, talking out of both sides of their mouth, the Trump administration says on one hand that the Venezuelan government and Maduro have been completely corrupted and have been completely taken over by a criminal drug narco gang

called Trende Aragua, the TDA group that they're sending off by kidnapping, deporting without due process to El Salvador. And yet on the other hand, they're saying, things are fine now in Venezuela, no more civil strife, everybody can go home, no more need for temporary protective status. The other thing the judge ruled in his 70 plus page opinion is that Christine Noem and no Homeland Security Director or Secretary has the inherent ability to revoke an extension of TPS, temporary protective status that was given by a prior Homeland Security Director. Mayorkas for Biden extended this on the way out. It was supposed to

last for an almost another year. She says, well, I'm just gonna revoke it. That's not what the statute says. Doesn't say you have the inherent authority to do that. And more fundamentally, because of the animus and the hatred and the discrimination out of Kristi Noem's own mouth, out of Donald Trump's own mouth, which are recited in the in the filing, the judge found it is likely, it is likely now at this juncture that the plaintiffs have proven that they will succeed on a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act because this move was arbitrary and capricious, racked and infected by animus and hatred, and that

it therefore violated the equal protection clause of our constitution, because their equal rights were violated. Why are they picking on the Venezuelan community? I live in Florida. There is a beautiful, hardworking, nurturing, contributing group of Venezuelans that have been here for years in the South Florida area. They've been here for,

I mean, they joked that there's sections of Weston, Florida. They used to call it Weston-Suela. They're now in a large group in Doral, which is where Donald Trump's golf course is, the Blue Monster. They call that Doral-Suela. And the judge spent time reciting evidence from the amicus briefs that were filed, that these hardworking Venezuelans are, as compared to the regular American general population, have more college degrees, work harder, pay more taxes, and commit less crime than anybody else. This conflation of hardworking, honest Venezuelans who just want to get the American dream and had a temporary protective status, not here illegally, not

here undocumented, not members of a drug gang, but just want the American dream that my grandparents wanted and obtained. So there's plenty of evidence that they are not criminals, they are not the drug gang that is being deported with much fanfare. But let me read to you from the judge's opinion in a couple of key spots. I'll give you the summary and then I'll give you the statements made by Kristi Noem and Donald Trump that the judge relied on to show that it's likely that equal protection of the Constitution has been violated for these Venezuelans living here.

This is what Judge Chen wrote on page one. At issue is whether this court should temporarily postpone actions by Kristi Noem, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, taken against over 600,000 Venezuelan nationals who have legal status. Let me emphasize that again. They have legal status. Let me emphasize that again. They have

legal status to reside and work temporarily in the U.S. The Secretary's action will shortly strip nearly 350,000 of these residents of their protection this week under the Temporary Protected Status Program, TPS, subjecting them to possible imminent deportation back to Venezuela, a country so rife with economic and political upheaval and danger that the United States State Department has categorized Venezuela as a level four do-not-travel country due to the high risk of wrongful detentions, terrorism, kidnapping, the arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, poor health infrastructure, etc.

That's from the State Department website. Putting aside for a minute the emphasis by Donald Trump for his executive order about using the Alien Enemies Act of 1789 that Venezuela has effectively been taken over by organized crime. The judge continues on page one, the unprecedented action of vacating existing temporary protective status, a step never taken by any previous administration in the 35 years of the TPS program, initiated just three days after Secretary Noem took office, reverses actions taken by the Biden administration to extend TPS to Venezuelan nationals that have been in

place since 2021. Page two, although the secretary's actions appear predicated on negative stereotypes casting class-wide aspersions on their character, insinuating the judge said that they were released from Venezuelan prisons and mental health facilities and imposed huge financial burdens on local communities. Oh, I wonder where he got that from. Did you know Fast-Growing Trees is the biggest online nursery in the US? With thousands of different plants and over 2 million happy customers,

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using the code LegalAF at checkout. Fastgrowingtrees.com, code LegalAF. Now's the perfect time to plant. Use LegalAF to save today. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. Trump always talks about Mexicans and Venezuelans and people from Central and South America as being in this country because they used to be in gangs that they let the prisons out in those countries and the mental hospitals out in those countries. That's how he sees people,

including his own voters, that vote for him that are black, brown, white, Hispanic. The judge continues, the undisputed record establishes that Venezuelans TPS beneficiaries, listen to these stats, in fact have higher education attainment than most US citizens. Stop for a minute there. 40 to 54 percent of Venezuelans here on TPS have a bachelor's degree in college. Can't say the same for Americans, unfortunately. They have higher labor participation rates, meaning they work more. 80 to 96 percent work in the workforce, earn nearly all their personal income, 96%, and annually contribute billions of dollars, billions of dollars to the US economy.

They make their money here, they pay their money here, and pay hundreds of millions, if not billions, in Social Security taxes. They also have lower, listen to this, lower rates of criminality than the general US population. That's the group that Kristi Noem is saying is disgusting, is depraved, and must go, and they're, you know, I'll read for you for some of the comments from Kristi Noem, which the judge then recites. Therefore the judge has granted the motion and imposed a injunction.

Here's what he says on page three. For the reasons stated below, the court finds that the secretary's actions threatened to inflict irreparable harm on hundreds of thousands of persons whose lives, families, and livelihoods and will be severely disrupted, cost the United States billions in economic activity,

and injure public health and safety in communities throughout the U.S. At the same time, the government has failed to identify any real countervailing harm in continuing TPS for Venezuelan beneficiaries. Plaintiffs have also shown they will likely succeed in demonstrating that the actions taken by the secretary are unauthorized by law, arbitrary and capricious, and motivated by unconstitutional animus. In particular, let me read to you for what the judge says is that particular animus. Here's what the statements are.

Judge says on page 63, animus and stereotypes based on national origin and or race trigger strict scrutiny by a court. And here's the comments. Discriminatory statements by Secretary Noem. You know, Ice Barbie, she says, I got to get the scum off the streets. You know, talking about Venezuelans. Here we go. A social media post from February 28th, 2024,

where Noam said, Venezuela didn't send us their best. They emptied their prisons and sent criminals to America. That's a lie. Deportations need to start on day one of President Trump's term in office. Testimony during her January 15th confirmation hearing. The TPS program has been abused and manipulated by the Biden administration. The program was intended for temporary, to be temporary and this extension of over 600,000 Venezuelans as well as alarming when

you look at the different states including Colorado with gangs doing damage and harming the individuals in the people that live there. Here's the dirt bag comment coming up. January 29, 2025, she gave an interview on Fox News. Today we signed an executive order within the Department of Homeland Security in a direction that we're not going to follow through on what he did to tie our hands talking about Biden, including the Venezuelans that are here and members of TDA, the drug gang. Listen, I was in New York City yesterday

and the people of this country want these dirt bags conflating all Venezuelans, including you that live in Doral, Florida, all Venezuelans as dirt bags. Secretary Noem called Venezuelans dirt bags when announcing her decision. That's the headline. Um, Trump is also cited for his statements.

January 12th, 2018, showing animus. President Trump stated about people from Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries that are being protected under the TPS program. Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here? He then suggested the United States instead should bring in more people from Norway. He called them animals. He said that they're coming from these unbelievable places, coming out of prisons and jails, that they're eating their cats, that they're eating their pets. Judges had enough, so have I. Nationwide injunction, he gave the plaintiffs an additional time to file another motion

for stay, which will likely be granted, addressed to other people like the Haitian community, another strong and proud community here in South Florida. These are the things you need to remember at the time of the elections, folks. If this is the country that you want to wake up in, if this is the type of anti-patriotism, of violation of equal protection, calling people who are contributing to our society, including billions of dollars in tax revenue,

and calling them shitbags and dirtbags and depraved, and the rest, then you've woken up in the Trump America. If you want to fight back, do it by starting here. We talk truth to each other first before we talk truth to power. I'm Michael Popock and you're on Legal AF and the Midas Touch Network. In collaboration with the Midas Touch Network, we just launched the Legal AF YouTube channel. Help us build this pro-democracy channel where I'll be curating the top stories, the intersection of law and politics. Go to YouTube now and free subscribe at Legal AF MTN. That's at Legal AF MTN.