WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on May 19 said the Trump administration can move to strip more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants of temporary protected status, a win for President Donald Trump’s efforts to ramp up deportations.
A federal judge had blocked the administration from abruptly ending a program that allowed the migrants to live and work temporarily in the United States due to living conditions in their country.
In an unsigned order, the Supreme Court said the administration can end protections for the migrants pending appeal of the case. The brief order gave no explanation, as is common for actions on emergency requests.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she would have denied the administration’s request to lift the lower court’s order.
Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney for the migrants who are challenging the policy change, said the administration is undertaking “the largest single action stripping any group of non-citizens of immigration status in modern U.S. history.”
“That the Supreme Court authorized it in a two-paragraph order with no reasoning is truly shocking,” Arulanantham said. “The humanitarian and economic impact of the Court’s decision will be felt immediately, and will reverberate for generations.”
The coalition supporting the migrants is still trying to determine the implications of part of the order that could protect some Venezuelans.
But Arulanantham said many could be deported before the case is fully litigated.
The Justice Department argued courts don’t have the authority to review decisions by the Homeland Security secretary “in this fast-moving area of foreign affairs.”
Lawyers for the Venezuelans responded that “it should be uncontroversial that federal courts say what the law is.”
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in Northern California ruled in March that ending the program could harm hundreds of thousands of people, cost the economy billions of dollars and hurt public health and safety. He also said the government had failed to identify any real harm in keeping the program in place while the migrants are challenging its termination.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in February ordered an end to the program called Temporary Protected Status. She concluded that the immigrants burden local governments and said some Venezuelans were members of the gang Tren de Aragua, which President Donald Trump has declared a foreign terrorist organization.
The advocacy group National TPS Alliance and a handful of Venezuelans sued, arguing it’s not safe for them to return to their home country.
Cecilia Gonzalez Herrera, who is studying political science at the University of Central Florida, said she and other Venezuelans benefiting from the program are not criminals.
“We’re students, teachers, healthcare workers, small business owners,” she said. “We’re survivors who were looking for some shelter, for safety and opportunities in this country and we all deserve the chance to thrive without the fear of being sent back to danger.”
Venezuelans have been living under the autocratic regime of Nicolás Maduro for more than a decade amid runaway inflation, worsening poverty and widespread political persecution, according to the Washington Office on Latin America, a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C.
Chen, the California federal court judge, noted that Venezuela remains “so rife with economic and political upheaval and danger that the State Department has categorized Venezuela as a ‘Level 4: Do Not Travel’ country ‘due to the high risk of wrongful detentions, terrorism, kidnapping, the arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, poor health infrastructure.'”
Despite Noem’s negative stereotypes and aspersions, Chen wrote, TPS beneficiaries have a higher education on average than most Americans, with about half holding bachelor’s degrees, and a high rate of labor participation, contributing billions to the economy.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court lets Trump end Venezuelan migrants’ protected status for now
