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May 19 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court let Donald Trump's
administration on Monday end temporary protected status that was granted
to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in the United States by his
predecessor Joe Biden, as the Republican president moves to ramp up deportations as part of his hardline approach to immigration.
The court granted the Justice Department's request to lift a judge's order
that had halted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's decision to
terminate deportation protection conferred to Venezuelans under the
temporary protected status, or TPS, program while the administration
pursues an appeal in the case.
The program is a humanitarian designation under U.S. law for countries
stricken by war, natural disaster or other catastrophes, giving recipients living in the United States deportation protection and access to work
permits. The U.S. homeland security secretary can renew the designation.
Monday's brief order from the court, which has a 6-3 conservative
majority, was unsigned, as is typical when it acts on an emergency
request. Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole justice to
publicly dissent.
The court left open the door to challenges by migrants if Trump's administration tries to cancel work permits or other TPS-related documents
that were issued to expire in October 2026, the end of the TPS period
extended by Biden. The Department of Homeland Security has said about
348,202 Venezuelans were registered under Biden's 2023 TPS designation.
Monday's action came in a legal challenge by plaintiffs including some TPS recipients and the National TPS Alliance advocacy group.
"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," said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of a UCLA immigration law center and one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs.
Trump, who returned to the presidency in January, has pledged to deport
record numbers of migrants in the United States illegally and has moved to strip certain migrants of temporary legal protections, expanding the pool
of possible deportees.
The U.S. government under Biden, a Democrat, designated Venezuela for TPS
in 2021 and 2023. Just days before Trump returned to office, Biden's administration announced an extension of the programs to October 2026.
Noem, a Trump appointee, rescinded the extension and moved to end the TPS designation for a subset of Venezuelans who benefited from the 2023 designation. But San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Edward Chen ruled
in the legal challenge that Noem violated a federal law that governs the actions of federal agencies.
Chen said the administration's portrayal of the whole Venezuelan TPS
population as criminals was "baseless and smacks of racism." The judge
said these Venezuelans are more likely to hold bachelor's degrees and less likely to commit crimes than the general U.S. population.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on April 18
declined the administration's request to pause the judge's order.
Justice Department lawyers told the Supreme Court that Chen had "wrested control of the nation's immigration policy" from the government's
executive branch, headed by Trump, and had indefinitely delayed "sensitive policy decisions in an area of immigration policy that Congress recognized
must be flexible, fast-paced, and discretionary."
The plaintiffs told the Supreme Court that terminating TPS "would strip
work authorization from nearly 350,000 people living in the U.S., expose
them to deportation to an unsafe country and cost billions in economic
losses nationwide."
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-lets-trump-end- deportation-protection-venezuelans-2025-05-19/
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