The Supreme Court has granted President Donald Trump’s request to remove legal protections for Venezuelan nationals, opening them up to potential deportation.
The decision came in a brief order on May 19. It noted that the order was “without prejudice” toward a challenge to the policy implemented by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
The order came after another decision on May 16 in which the Supreme Court blocked the president from deporting suspected Venezuelan gang members under the Alien Enemies Act.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, addressing the temporary legal protections case, told the Supreme Court in a brief on May 1 that a federal judge in California had overstepped his authority.
“The court contravened an express bar on judicial review, sidestepped black-letter law authorizing agencies to reverse as-yet-inoperative actions, and embraced a baseless equal-protection theory on the road to issuing impermissible universal relief that intrudes on central Executive Branch operations,” Sauer said.
He argued that the order “upsets the judgments of the political branches, prohibiting the executive branch from enforcing a time-sensitive immigration policy and indefinitely extending an immigration status that Congress intended to be” temporary.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected the administration’s request for a stay of the lower court’s bar pending appeal.
The matter stems from a suit filed by the National Temporary Protected Status Alliance against Noem.
The Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program was created by an act of Congress in 1990 and allows the Department of Homeland Security secretary to prevent deportation—and create a path to citizenship—for qualifying illegal immigrants who cannot return home safely.
Beginning in March 2021, then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas awarded Venezuela TPS designation because it was “facing a severe humanitarian emergency,” marked by political conflict, food and medicine shortages, and “deepening poverty.”
The protected status for each branch of the program was renewed several times, in 18-month blocks. The latest extension was granted on January 17, just before Trump assumed office, and was set to expire in 2026.
Noem canceled the extension of the 2023 designation shortly after she was sworn in, which meant that branch of the program would end on April 7. The 2021 version of the program is set to continue until September.
California District Judge Edward Chen blocked the cancellation on March 31. He wrote in his opinion that statutes cited by Noem in court filings “do not give her the authority” to cancel the TPS extension for Venezuela, noting that such an extension had never been canceled in the program’s 35-year history.
