Supreme Court TPS ruling raises question even as it allows deportations of Venezuelans
Since launching a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration in January, the Trump administration has lost one legal dispute after another in California, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., and even Texas.
But on Monday, the administration’s losing streak paused, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The justices lifted a federal judge’s stay that had blocked the government’s plan to cancel deportation protections and work permits for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants living in Florida and other states. But while their decision was stunning for its impact, the unsigned, two-paragraph order lacked clarity and guidance, raising as many questions as answers.
To be sure, the high court’s order will allow the Department of Homeland Security to revoke the Temporary Protected Status for the Venezuelan immigrants, even as they challenge the government’s revocation policy in federal court in San Francisco. The order will remain in effect until a lower appeals court reviews the judge’s injunction ruling.
But the justices’ order also indicated that certain individuals with pending application for immigration benefits such as political asylum could challenge the government if authorities try to cancel their work permits or remove them from the country in the meantime.
That ambiguity has left Venezuelan immigrants with TPS not only fearful but also confused.
Maureen Porras, the vice mayor of Doral, which has a substantial Venezuelan population, said the Supreme Court’s decision would “likely lead to more confusion.”
“The final decision on termination is still being litigated. Venezuelans are living in limbo, enduring uncertainty and a back and forth from the different courts,” Porras said. “I think it’s important to provide stability and keep the status quo until a final decision is made.”
Ahilan Arulanantham, a lawyer representing the seven immigrants challenging the Trump administration, called the court’s decision “truly shocking,” especially that it was announced “in a two-paragraph order with no reasoning.”
“This is the largest single action stripping any group of noncitizens of immigration status in modern U.S. history,” said Arulanantham, a law professor at UCLA. “The humanitarian and economic impact of the court’s decision will be felt immediately, and will reverberate for generations.”
The Temporary Protected Status program, enacted by Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, allows migrants from nations that have experienced national disasters, armed conflicts or other extraordinary instabilities to live and work legally in the United States. Since the start of his second term on Jan. 20, President Donald Trump has set out to end those protections as he tries to fulfill his campaign promise to deport millions of immigrants.
The immigrants’ challenge was prompted by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision in February to revoke the protections for about 600,000 Venezuelans — a status that had been extended by the Biden administration until October 2026.
The high-stakes appeal by the administration’s solicitor general carried grave consequences for one group of about 350,000 Venezuelans whose protected status was set to expire in April under an order by the Department of Homeland Security. The same immigration protections for another group of about 250,000 Venezuelans are set to run out in September.
READ MORE: Deportation into danger: U.S. about to send Venezuelans back to persecution, even death
Before its term ended on Jan. 20, the Biden administration extended those two deadlines until October 2026, but Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem revoked that policy, leading to the suit filed in San Francisco challenging her decision.
Advocates for Venezuelans with TPS condemned the Supreme Court’s ruling, saying they feared it would lead to mass deportations back to a country led by an oppressive regime likely to punish them.
In its petition to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration argued that federal courts have no authority to review Noem’s decision revoking TPS protections for Venezuelans who fled to the United States. Despite the exodus of millions as Venezuela’s economy collapsed, Noem recently found that those protections for Venezuelan immigrants run “contrary to the national interest” of the United States.
“The [federal] 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,” Solicitor General John Sauer wrote in the 41-page petition to the Supreme Court.
“The decision to delay the [Homeland Security] Secretary’s actions effectively nullifies them, tying them up in the very judicial second-guessing that Congress prohibited,” Sauer added. “The district court’s ill-considered preliminary injunction should be stayed.”
The petition was prompted by a federal appeals court’s ruling last month that upheld the federal judge’s decision blocking Noem’s revocation of deportation protections for Venezuelans in the United States.
In April, a three-judge appellate panel in San Francisco backed the district judge’s decision rejecting the government’s request to lift his stay of the revocation order, stating that Trump administration officials “have not demonstrated that they will suffer irreparable harm.” In March, U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen found that the Venezuelans with TPS in the United States could be “irreparably injured” if he did not put a hold on their deportations.
In his petition to the Supreme Court, Sauer zeroed in on the appellate court’s rationale for affirming Chen’s injunction.
“That explanation cannot withstand scrutiny,” Sauer wrote. “So long as the order is in effect, the [Homeland Security] Secretary must permit hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan nationals to remain in the country, notwithstanding her reasoned determination that doing so is ‘contrary to the national interest.’ ”
In his decision, Chen found that Noem had acted on broad generalizations and stereotypes when she revoked the deportation protections and work permits of about 350,000 Venezuelans benefiting from TPS.
“It is evident that the Secretary made sweeping negative generalizations about Venezuelan TPS beneficiaries,” the judge said in a 78-page order on March 31. “Acting on the basis of a negative group stereotype and generalizing such stereotype to the entire group is the classic example of racism.”
READ MORE: What the end of TPS means for Venezuelans in the U.S.: Key questions answered
Lawyers for the Trump administration argued that Noem has the exclusive power to revoke the Biden administration’s TPS order for Venezuelan nationals in the United States and that the plaintiffs don’t have rights under their “equal protection” argument to challenge her authority.
Government lawyers said Noem’s “determinations are immigration policies rationally related to legitimate governmental interests and were not motivated by racially discriminatory intent,” despite what Chen found in his initial ruling.
They said the judge’s postponement of Noem’s order “imposes irreparable injury” to the executive branch and the public, asserting that Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members in the United States “were covered” along with other Venezuelan nationals by the Biden administration’s TPS order in 2023.
Miami Herald staff writer Veronica Egui Brito contributed to this story.
This story was originally published May 20, 2025 at 4:03 PM.
