Supreme Court Hands Trump Administration a Win in Its Effort To Strip Legal Protections From Venezuelan Migrants

The Trump administration has permission — at least for now — to strip legal protections from 350,000 Venezuelan migrants offered temporary amnesty by President Biden while lawyers challenging the administration continue their efforts in lower courts, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday.The justices paused a lower-court order that blocked the Department of Homeland Security from removing the protections as part of its mass deportation efforts. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole member to dissent from Monday’s unsigned ruling.Mr. Biden had given Temporary Protected Status to the Venezuelans due to conditions in their home country. The protection allows them to legally live in the United States and gives recipients work permits along with other legal rights.Mr. Biden extended the TPS program for Venezuela to October 2026 shortly before leaving office, but the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, announced in February an early termination of the program. It is the first time any administration has ended such protections early.Senator Schmitt called the ruling a major win for the president’s immigration agenda. “The Left has used it as a backdoor to permanent residency — a de facto amnesty,” Mr. Schmitt posted to X. “SCOTUS got this one right. We are going to continue to see a ping-ponging back and forth as district judges are reined in and the Trump Administration presses forward with the great deportation.”Along with the 350,000 who lost their protections last month, another 250,000 Venezuelan TPS holders are expected to lose protection in September.Some TPS recipients and a group that advocates for refugees sued over the order. “I am stunned to have TPS ripped out from under me at a moment’s notice,” a plaintiff in the case, Freddy Arape, said. “I trusted that the government would stand by its word when it extended TPS, and now my life is upended.” A San Francisco-based U.S. district judge, Edward Chen, halted the termination of the program, ruling that it would bring irreparable harm to the people targeted. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, also in San Francisco, declined the administration’s request to pause the judge’s order while the case is decided.The Department of Justice made an emergency filing to the Supreme Court, claiming Judge Chen had “wrested control of the nation’s immigration policy” away from the executive branch.“This is the largest single action stripping any group of non-citizens of immigration status in modern U.S. history. That the Supreme Court authorized it in a two-paragraph order with no reasoning is truly shocking,” a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, Ahilan Arulanantham, tells The New York Sun. “The humanitarian and economic impact of the court’s decision will be felt immediately, and will reverberate for generations.” The justices didn’t rule on the merits of the case on Monday but overturned a stay while the Ninth Circuit decides the case. A hearing is set for July. Any ruling that the court makes is expected to be appealed to the high court.Congress created the TPS program in 1990 to help citizens of countries stricken by war, natural disasters, or other catastrophes. Along with stripping protections from Venezuelans, the Trump administration has announced it was ending similar protections for Afghans.

Supreme Court Hands Trump Administration a Win in Its Effort To Strip Legal Protections From Venezuelan Migrants

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