By Andrew Chung
(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court allowed Donald Trump’s administration on Monday to strip about 350,000 Venezuelans living in the United States of a temporary protected status given under 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 San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Edward Chen’s order that had halted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to terminate the deportation protection conferred to Venezuelans under the temporary protected status, or TPS, program.
Chen acted in a legal challenge by plaintiffs including some of the TPS recipients and the National TPS Alliance advocacy group, who said Venezuela remains an unsafe country.
Trump, who returned to the presidency in January, has pledged to deport record numbers of migrants in the United States illegally and has taken actions to strip certain migrants of temporary legal protections, expanding the pool of possible deportees.
The TPS program is a humanitarian designation under U.S. law for countries stricken by war, natural disaster or other catastrophe, giving recipients living in the United States deportation protection and access to work permits. The designation can be renewed by the U.S. homeland security secretary.
The U.S. government under Biden, a Democrat, twice designated Venezuela for TPS, in 2021 and 2023. In January, days before Trump returned to office, the Biden administration announced an extension of the programs to 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Noem, a Trump appointee, rescinded the extension and moved to end the TPS designation for a subset of Venezuelans who benefited from the 2023 designation. The Department of Homeland Security said about 348,202 Venezuelans were registered under that 2023 designation.
Chen ruled that Noem violated a federal law that governs the actions of agencies. The judge also said the revocation of the TPS status appeared to have been predicated on “negative stereotypes” by insinuating the Venezuelan migrants were criminals.
“Generalization of criminality to the Venezuelan TPS population as a whole is baseless and smacks of racism predicated on generalized false stereotypes,” Chen wrote, adding that Venezuelan TPS holders were more likely to hold bachelor’s degrees than American citizens 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 in their Supreme Court filing said Chen had “wrested control of the nation’s immigration policy” away from the government’s executive branch, headed by Trump.
“The court’s order contravenes fundamental Executive Branch prerogatives and indefinitely delays sensitive policy decisions in an area of immigration policy that Congress recognized must be flexible, fast-paced, and discretionary,” they wrote.
The plaintiffs told the Supreme Court that granting the administration’s request “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.”
The State Department currently warns against travel to Venezuela “due to the high risk of wrongful detentions, terrorism, kidnapping, the arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, poor health infrastructure.”
The Trump administration in April also terminated TPS for thousands of Afghans and Cameroonians in the United States. Those actions are not part of the current case.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)
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