Last week, a federal judge in California ruled that the Trump administration had overstepped when it moved to end the extension of Temporary Protected Status granted to nearly 600,000 Venezuelans in the final days of the Biden administration.
The ruling, by Judge Edward M. Chen of Federal District Court in San Francisco, capped a monthslong legal fight over the fate of Temporary Protected Status, or T.P.S., for Venezuelans, which the president has sought to end as part of his campaign to deport hundreds of thousands of people.
But in the days since Judge Chen told the Department of Homeland Security to allow the Venezuelans to retain T.P.S. until next year, the agency hadn’t updated its website to show that the Venezuelans were still covered by T.P.S. and wasn’t allowing many of them to re-register as they needed to by a Sept. 10 deadline.
On Thursday, lawyers for the Venezuelans who sued the Department of Homeland Security were back in Judge Chen’s courtroom asking him to compel the agency to comply.
The delay, they argued, was making it difficult for the Venezuelans to work, as they are permitted to do if they have T.P.S. “This matters for employers in particular, who look to the website to determine whether somebody is eligible to work and whether their T.P.S. is still valid,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, one of the lawyers representing the immigrants.
William Weiland, a government lawyer, offered explanations for the concerns raised by the plaintiffs. Mr. Weiland said that the problem with registration was a “coding issue” that had not been resolved until nearly 4 p.m. on the day of the deadline and that three people had been able to register once it was resolved. Mr. Weiland also said the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services website hadn’t been updated to reflect that T.P.S. for Venezuelans was in effect because the government had not thought the judge’s Sept. 5 decision was effective immediately.
“My view is that the order was effective immediately,” Judge Chen said in the hearing on Thursday. “So I’m making that triply clear at this point.” He ordered the government to update its website by 5 p.m. Eastern time on Friday.
Lawyers for the Venezuelans also asked Judge Chen to make the government reopen online registration for T.P.S. to Venezuelans for 24 hours and to give the plaintiffs four hours’ advance notice of the reopening. As of late Thursday, Judge Chen had not yet issued an order on that request.
The lawsuit challenging the government’s effort to end T.P.S. for Venezuelans, as well as Haitians, landed before Judge Chen in March, when he issued an order temporarily blocking Homeland Security from ending the program. In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected the administration’s request that it pause Judge Chen’s ruling, allowing the case to move forward and setting up Judge’s Chen’s decision last week.
But even with the decision, the fate of T.P.S. and the people currently covered by it appears tenuous given a vague, two-paragraph order from the Supreme Court in May that had allowed the Trump administration lift any deportation protections while the case was still pending.
Judge Chen’s final ruling last week effectively concluded the case at the lower level, allowing protections to take hold for now.
The Trump administration has sought to cancel T.P.S. protections for hundreds of thousands of people from several countries as part of a broader effort to rescind Biden-era programs that allowed immigrants to live and work legally in the country.
The T.P.S. program allows foreign nationals to remain in the United States for up to 18 months when circumstances such as natural disasters or armed conflict make returning to their home countries unsafe. The status also comes with eligibility for work permits.
Allison McCann is a reporter and graphics editor at The Times who covers immigration.
Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the federal courts, including the legal disputes over the Trump administration’s agenda.
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