The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for President Donald Trump’s administration to strip temporary deportation protections from potentially hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.
In a brief and unsigned order, a majority of the high court ruled that the administration could move forward with its plans to end a form of humanitarian relief known as Temporary Protected Status — a move that, immigration attorneys say, stands to make more people vulnerable to deportation.
The court’s decision was roundly criticized by advocates for immigrant rights.
Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, which had represented the Venezuelans involved in the case, described the decision as “the largest single action stripping any group of noncitizens of immigration status in modern US history.”
But in a cryptic second paragraph in the order, the court noted it wasn’t weighing whether the administration could revoke work authorizations and other benefits of TPS that had already been issued after the Biden administration extended the status in January. It was not immediately clear how many people may have received those benefits or how the decision would apply to them.
The court’s ruling is also unlikely to be the final step. The case will now go to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which will review the underlying decisions the Trump administration made to revoke TPS status for Venezuelans.
At issue is a form of humanitarian relief known as Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelan migrants. Seven Venezuelan nationals who are covered by TPS and a group that represents others challenged the move, arguing in part that the decision was motivated by racial and political hostility.
Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to note her dissent.
Several attorneys involved with the case criticized the lack of clarity in the high court’s order, which they said will have the practical effect of letting the Trump administration take a first stab at defining how it will be implemented.
Arulanantham, speaking to reporters about an hour after the order, called it “impossible to understand.”
“The Supreme Court didn’t explain why it issued the order,” said Jessica Bansal, an attorney who also worked on the case on behalf of the plaintiffs. “The case now continues under the shadow of an unexplained two-paragraph order with an unclear impact.”
Earlier this year, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem moved to end TPS status for Venezuelan migrants, with more than 300,000 Venezuelans in the US set to lose those protections in early April. Another 250,000 immigrants who arrived before 2023 are scheduled to lose their status in September.
A central issue in the proceedings was whether Noem had the authority to wipe away the existing TPS designation before it was scheduled to expire.
The Biden administration first granted TPS for Venezuelans in March 2021, citing the increased instability in the country, and expanded it in 2023. Two weeks before Trump took office, the Biden administration renewed protections for an additional 18 months. Monday’s ruling applies to the 2023 designation.
The challengers, Venezuelan migrants covered under TPS, contended that Noem’s abrupt reversal of the protections violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which mandates specific procedures for federal agencies when implementing policy changes. They also argued that Noem’s decision was motivated by racial and political bias.
A federal district court in California temporarily blocked Noem’s order in late March.
US District Judge Edward Chen, nominated to the bench by former President Barack Obama, described Venezuela as “a country so rife with economic and political upheaval and danger that the State Department” has warned against travel there “‘due to the high risk of wrongful detentions, terrorism, kidnapping, the arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, poor health infrastructure.’”
Congress created the TPS program in 1990, allowing the federal government to provide temporary protection for migrants from countries enduring natural disasters, wars and other conditions that would make it dangerous for people to return. At the end of the first Trump administration, officials described Venezuela as “the worst humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere” and granted a different form of temporary relief to some of its migrants.
This story has been updated with additional details.
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