Immigrant rights lawyers on Wednesday urged a federal appeals court in California to affirm a district court’s order that would block the Trump administration from ending temporary deportation protections for about 600,000 Venezuelans in the United States.
In oral arguments before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, lawyers representing immigrants who had been covered under the protections said many of their clients had already lost their jobs and businesses as the program, known as Temporary Protected Status, or T.P.S., has been allowed to expire.
Hundreds of Venezuelans have been detained and deported, and parents are being separated from their American-born children, the lawyers said.
“We absolutely have shown harm in all 50 states,” Ahilan T. Arulanantham, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told the panel at the hearing in Pasadena, Calif.
Sarah Welch, a lawyer with the Justice Department, urged the appeals court to overturn the district court order. She said the Supreme Court had already made two rare interventions on the issue, both favoring the Trump administration’s decision to end T.P.S.
In October, the Supreme Court temporarily stayed the district court ruling and allowed the Trump administration to proceed with its new policy while arguments continued in the lower courts. Whatever the Ninth Circuit decides, the outcome is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court.
Ms. Welch said that Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, had followed appropriate legal procedures to reverse the Biden administration’s extensions of the initiative and that Ms. Noem had done so in the interest of national security.
The hearing came as the relationship between the United States and Venezuela is entering new territory.
At the beginning of January, the Trump administration conducted a military operation that captured the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and brought him to New York to stand trial. Since then, President Trump has asserted that the United States is running Venezuela, working with Mr. Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez.
On Thursday, an envoy sent by Ms. Rodríguez will visit Washington to explore reopening Venezuela’s embassy. On the same day, Mr. Trump is scheduled to meet with Venezuela’s top opposition leader, María Corina Machado.
Administration officials have sought to encourage Venezuelan immigrants to return to their native country, arguing that the removal of Mr. Maduro — a man whom American prosecutors accuse of being a narco-terrorist and a drug kingpin — would soon ensure a safer and more stable Venezuela.
The court case, brought by several T.P.S. holders and the National TPS Alliance, an advocacy organization, also seeks to preserve the protected status for roughly 330,000 Haitians that is slated to expire in February.
The hearing is the latest salvo in a wave of legal challenges around the country that are seeking to stop the Trump administration’s efforts to upend the T.P.S. program, slash the number of people admitted as refugees, dismantle the asylum process and end other humanitarian protections for immigrants.
Over the past year, Mr. Trump, long a skeptic of asylum seekers and refugees, has sought to drastically curb the forms of legal immigration, arguing that some petitioners are exploiting the programs and threatening national security.
Immigration lawyers and advocates say that the administration is embarking on the largest de-legalization effort in U.S. history as it seeks to expel millions of immigrants from the United States.
T.P.S. allows people from nations going through natural disasters, armed conflicts or other crises to live and work temporarily in the United States. For some recipients, the program had become all but permanent, as crises in their home countries have continued for decades.
Last year, Department of Homeland Security officials moved to terminate the T.P.S. program for more than a million people from Haiti, Venezuela and at least half a dozen other countries. This week, as more federal immigration agents descended upon Minnesota in the wake of a social services scandal implicating Somali Americans, the Trump administration announced that it would end T.P.S. for Somalis.
In the latest court filings, government lawyers argue that Ms. Noem initially moved to end the Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans because conditions in Venezuela had improved in critical areas, such as public health and the economy. But lawyers representing the T.P.S. holders countered that administration officials had not conducted a meaningful review of the country’s conditions, that Ms. Noem’s actions had violated federal legal procedures and that they were based on racial animus.
Nearly eight million Venezuelans have fled their troubled country over the past decade, the largest exodus in Latin America’s modern history.
Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., seeking to respond to local and state officials who were grappling with overstretched shelters and resources, turned to humanitarian aid programs, which he created or expanded to allow the new arrivals to live and work in the United States.
The T.P.S. program, created under President George H.W. Bush, grew to encompass more than 600,000 Venezuelans, the largest protected population. Roughly 350,000 people immediately lost their protections in November after the Supreme Court ruled in the government’s favor.
Jazmine Ulloa is a national reporter covering immigration for The Times.
The post Venezuelan Immigrants Urge Appeals Court to Restore Deportation Protections appeared first on New York Times.
