Supreme Court allows Trump to cancel protected status for Venezuelans

Washington Post

19-05-2025

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to cancel temporary protections that have allowed nearly 350,000 Venezuelans to remain in the United States for humanitarian reasons.
Trump officials had asked the justices to lift a lower-court order that barred the administration from ending the temporary protected status while litigation over the matter continues.
The Biden administration created the protected status for Venezuelans in 2021 and 2023, finding that economic and political turmoil under the regime of President Nicolás Maduro made it too risky to deport migrants back to their home country. Officials approved a third extension of TPS in the waning days of Joe Biden's presidency that would have kept the protections in place through October 2026, but the Trump administration said the program was not in the 'national interest.'
The homeland security secretary can designate immigrant groups for protected status if natural disasters, armed conflict or other extraordinary — but temporary — conditions raise fears for migrants' safety if they are returned to their homelands. The program is intended to end when conditions improve.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem rescinded the Biden extension in February, before it took effect, alleging that the Venezuelans were a strain on local resources and, since some were accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang, represented a public safety threat.
Without the Biden extension, the protections were set to end for some migrants in April and others in September.
'The harm here is particularly pronounced because the Secretary determined that an 18-month extension would harm the United States' 'national security' and 'public safety,' while also straining police stations, city shelters, and aid services in local communities that had reached a breaking point,' the government wrote in its filings with the high court.
In February, seven Venezuelan migrants and a nonprofit organization sued the Trump administration to block the termination of protected status for Venezuelans. A federal judge in Northern California paused President Donald Trump's action, ruling that the cancellation of protected status violated procedural rules and was probably sparked by racial animus.
'[T]he Secretary's action threatens to: inflict irreparable harm on hundreds of thousands of persons whose lives, families, and livelihoods will be severely disrupted, cost the United States billions in economic activity, and injure public health and safety in communities throughout the United States,' the judge wrote in his opinion, which was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. 'At the same time, the government has failed to identify any real countervailing harm in continuing TPS for Venezuelan beneficiaries.'
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene.n.
The migrants and nonprofit organization argue in their filings that Venezuela is still unsafe and the cancellation of the TPS program was motivated by bias. 'The Secretary explicitly relied on false, negative stereotypes — like the myth that Venezuela emptied its prisons to send migrants here — to justify both the vacatur and termination decisions,' the petitioners wrote. 'Her statements conflated Venezuelan TPS holders with 'dirt bags,' gang members, and dangerous criminals.'
Earlier this month, the Trump administration asked the high court to clear the way for it to deport more than 530,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who have been allowed to stay in the United States while asylum and removal proceedings play out.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.