Trump asks Supreme Court to allow an end to protected status for Venezuelans 

The Trump administration came to the Supreme Court once again on Thursday afternoon, asking the justices to clear the way for it to end the protected status of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan citizens living in the United States. The ruling by Senior U.S. District Judge Edward Chen keeping the protection in place, Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote, “wrested control of the nation’s immigration policy away from the Executive Branch and imposed the court’s own perception as to whether the government’s actions might ‘contradict U.S. foreign policies,’ ‘have adverse national security ramifications,’ or ‘weaken the standing of the United States in the international community.’” 

In the Temporary Protected Status program, Congress gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the power to allow some foreign citizens to stay in the United States and work if they cannot return safely to their home country because of a natural disaster, armed conflict, or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions in the foreign state.” The secretary is instructed to terminate the TPS designation when a country no longer meets those criteria.  

In 2021, Alejandro Mayorkas – then the Secretary of Homeland Security – designated Venezuela under the TPS program and later extended the program. 

At issue in the case is the Feb. 1, 2025, termination of the TPS designation (as well as efforts to extend it) by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem for a particular group of Venezuelan nationals.

Less than three weeks later, the plaintiffs in this case – Venezuelan nationals who are beneficiaries of the TPS program, as well as an organization representing TPS beneficiaries – went to federal court in San Francisco, seeking to postpone Noem’s termination.  

On March 31, Chen granted that request and issued an order that barred Noem from ending the designation. He called Noem’s conduct in seeking to lift an existing TPS designation “unprecedented,” and suggested that her decision had been “predicated on negative stereotypes” about Venezuelan migrants.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rejected the government’s request to stay Chen’s order while its appeal continued. That prompted Sauer to come to the Supreme Court on Thursday, seeking to put Chen’s order on hold while the government appeals to the 9th Circuit and, if necessary, the Supreme Court.

The TPS program “implicates particularly discretionary, sensitive, and foreign-policy-laden judgments of the Executive Branch regarding immigration policy,” Sauer emphasized. And in particular, he wrote, Congress specifically provided that courts should not be able to review the secretary’s determinations. But although the TPS statute is “unambiguous” on that point, Sauer stressed, Chen concluded that he could review Noem’s decisions because the plaintiffs had brought their challenges under the federal law governing administrative agencies. Chen “issued sweeping preliminary relief that overrides” Noem’s determinations and puts her decisions on hold “indefinitely,” requiring her to allow “hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan nations to remain in the country, notwithstanding her reasoned determination that doing so is ‘contrary to the national interest,’” Sauer complained. 

The Supreme Court directed TPS beneficiaries to file a response to the government’s request by 5 p.m. on Thursday, May 8. 

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