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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday gave the Trump administration the green light to revoke special legal protections for thousands of Venezuelan immigrants.
The high court granted an emergency application filed by the administration, meaning officials can move forward with reversing a decision made at the tail end of the Biden administration to extend protections for more than 300,000 Venezuelans under the federal Temporary Protected Status program.
The brief order noted that liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the application. Litigation will now continue in lower courts.
As a result of political instability in Venezuela, the Biden administration in March 2021 said Venezuelans were eligible for temporary protected status under the federal program that has existed since 1990 to provide humanitarian relief to people from countries reeling from war, natural disasters, or other catastrophes.
People accepted into the program have legal status in the United States and can get work authorization for up to 18 months, subject to extensions.
At issue before the Supreme Court was a subsequent designation made in October 2023 and extended in January just before Trump took office. It is set to expire in October 2026.
In February, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sought to unwind those determinations, meaning the protections would expire this year instead.
A judge in the Northern District of California blocked the move, citing concerns that the decision was based in part on racial animus.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the administration’s emergency application that the courts could not review Noem’s decision.
“The court’s order contravenes fundamental executive branch prerogatives and indefinitely delays sensitive policy decisions in an area of immigration police that Congress recognized must be flexible, fast-paced and discretionary,” he said.
The National TPS Alliance and individual Venezuelans challenged the move in court.
Their lawyers wrote that the Trump administration was essentially seeking to evade judicial review on the scope of its own powers.
“It should be unremarkable that federal courts say what the law is,” they added.
The Supreme Court decision comes just three days after the court handed a defeat to the Trump administration on another aspect of its hardline immigration agenda in a separate case involving Venezuelan detainees.
In that case, the court ruled that the Trump administration must give immigrants a genuine chance to bring objection if the government seeks to deport them using a wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act.
