Trump asks Supreme Court for an end to Venezuelans’ protected status
The Trump administration went back to the Supreme Court on Thursday, asking for permission to end the protected status for hundreds of thousands Venezuelan citizens in the United States. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said that the ruling by Senior U.S. district judge Edward Chen, which kept the protection in place “removed control of the nation’s immigration policy from the Executive Branch” and “imposed the court’s own perception of whether the government’s actions could ‘contradict U.S. Foreign Policies,’ ‘have detrimental national security ramifications’ or ‘weakening the standing of United States in international community’.”
Under the Tempo In 2021, Alejandro Mayorkas, then the Secretary of Homeland Security, designated Venezuela as a TPS country and 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. Chen granted this request on March 31 and issued an order barring Noem from terminating the designation. He called Noem’s conduct in attempting to lift a TPS designation “unprecedented” and suggested that Noem’s decision was “based on negative stereotypes” of Venezuelan migrants. Sauer went to the Supreme Court Thursday to ask for a stay of Chen’s order while the government appealed to the 9th Circuit, and if necessary to the Supreme Court. He wrote that Congress had specifically stated that courts could not review the secretary’s decisions. Sauer emphasized that although the TPS statute was “unambiguous” in this regard, Chen decided that he could review Noem’s decisions since the plaintiffs brought their challenges under federal law governing the administrative agencies. Sauer complained that Chen “issued sweeping preliminaries that override” Noem’s determinations, and puts her decisions “indefinitely” on hold. This requires her to allow “hundreds and thousands of Venezuelan countries to remain in the nation, notwithstanding [her] reasoned determination that this is ‘contrary’ to the national interest,” The Supreme Court ordered TPS recipients to respond to the government by 5 p.m., Thursday, May 8, if they wish to continue to be on TPS.
Posted in Emergency appeals and applications, Featured
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Amy Howe
Trump asks Supreme Court for an end to Venezuelans’ protected status
SCOTUSblog
(May. 1, 2025, 6:28 PM),
