Supreme Court nixes protective status for Venezuelan migrants

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court ruled on Monday to strip protected status from nearly 350,000 Venezuelan migrants living in the U.S., boosting President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan.

A San Francisco judge blocked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from axing safeguards for Venezuelan migrants facing dangerous conditions in their home country. Trump accused the judge of interfering with foreign policy, asking the Supreme Court to intervene.

The Supreme Court did not explain its ruling. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Joe Biden appointee, dissented.

According to the Trump administration, revoking protected status also invalidated employment authorization documents, H-1B visas, and other proof of legal entry into the U.S. The Supreme Court said its ruling does not apply to migrants challenging those revocations.

Temporary Protected Status is a designation applied to nationals of certain countries where violence or economic duress makes deportation difficult or unsafe. Venezuelans make up the largest number of such status holders in the nation.

Last week, the White House assailed the justices for finding the migrants had been denied due process.  On Monday, the administration sang a different tune.

“The Supreme Court’s order today — rightfully putting on hold the lower court decision — is an important inflection point in the ongoing saga of lawless lower court decisions that flout plain law and legislate from the bench,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson. “Temporary Protected Status is, by definition, temporary, and is committed to the discretion of the DHS Secretary.”

Before leaving office, former President Joe Biden issued an 18-month extension of TPS for Venezuelans. In February, Noem revoked the extension, ending TPS status for almost 350,000 migrants.

During a Fox News interview, Noem called Venezuelan immigrants “dirtbags” and insinuated they were members of criminal gangs. Venezuela migrants and the National TPS Alliance, an immigrant advocacy group, sued the administration in February, claiming that Noem’s actions were unlawful and motivated by racial animus.

Senior U.S. District Judge Edward Chen, a Barack Obama appointee, ruled that Noem’s comments and en masse actions against all beneficiaries made it evident that she made sweeping negative generalizations about Venezuelan TPS holders.

“Acting on the basis of a negative group stereotype and generalizing such stereotypes to the entire group is the classic example of racism,” Chen wrote in his March decision.

The Trump administration dismissed the claims, arguing that Noem’s actions were based on reasoned policy determinations. The Justice Department faulted Chen for stepping into the case, claiming that the ruling interfered with executive branch prerogatives and delayed sensitive policy decisions.

The Venezuelan migrants rejected Trump’s reframing of the case about national security instead of whether they must return to a country that the State Department deems too dangerous to visit.

“It should be uncontroversial that federal courts say what the law is,” the migrants wrote. “Yet the government’s application seeks emergency relief asserting that an agency’s legal conclusions about the extent of its own power are entirely unreviewable, even if contrary to the plain text of its governing statute and settled agency practice.”

If implemented, nearly 350,000 would lose their right to live and work in the U.S.

Trump said the courts do not have the authority to challenge executive authority over the agency. The migrants said this would leave federal courts powerless to stop even blatantly lawless agency action.

“Future administrations could designate countries without regard to the time constraints and country conditions requirements Congress mandated,” the migrants wrote. “They could designate Mexico for fifty years to accomplish mass legalization, or China and India to sweeten a trade deal.”

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