Once again, Supreme Court rules Trump can strip Venezuelans of TPS protections
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday cleared the path for the Trump administration to strip the deportation protections and work permits from hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants already in the country.
The justices granted an emergency request from the Trump administration to block the ruling of Northern California District Judge Edward Chen. Last month, Chen ordered federal officials to restore a Biden-era extension of Temporary Protected Status for Venezuela that lasted until Oct. 2026. The justices also wrote that the future of the protections will depend on how an appeals court in California responds to a separate appeal from the Trump administration on the same case out of San Francisco.
“Although the posture of the case has changed, the parties’ legal arguments and relative harms have not,” the court said in a 300-word ruling, “The same result that we reached in May is appropriate here.”
Friday’s order provoked fear and distress among the 605,000 Venezuelans living in the United States under TPS. Many beneficiaries have ongoing asylum proceedings because they fled political persecution and repression in Venezuela. But while that allows them to legally live in the U.S while their case unfolds, it does not grant any form of lawful or permanent status.
The ruling especially makes those with no other lawful pathways vulnerable to deportation to a homeland in turmoil so extreme the federal government opted to grant TPS in the first place.
The Department of Homeland Security called Friday’s decision a “major Supreme Court legal victory.
“The American people should not have had to go to the Supreme Court twice to see justice done. Temporary Protected Status was always supposed to be just that: Temporary. Yet, previous administrations abused, exploited and mangled TPS into a de facto amnesty program,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.
But those who depend on the status to live and work in the United States decried the development.
“It is heartbreaking that the Supreme Court has rubber-stamped this administration’s unlawful cancellation of TPS,” said Cecilia González Herrera, 26, one of the seven Venezuelan plaintiffs suing the Trump administration for the termination ogf TPS. “This decision will upend the lives of hundreds of thousands of hardworking, law-abiding TPS holders like myself.”
González, a Kissimmee resident, added: “We will continue to fight for our rights, for our dignity and for the freedom to live without fear in the country we now call home.”
The Florida family of a man who was recently was deported to Venezuela despite having TPS at the time said they were shocked by the ruling and afraid they could be detained and deported at any time. While many Venezuelans have been released from ICE custody in the past week, their future unclear after the Supreme Court ruling.
The Department of Homeland Security has detained hundreds of TPS holders from Venezuela nationwide, creating confusion about how the protections are being applied. While some have been released from custody, others have remained in detention for weeks or even months.
“This is perhaps the most extreme sign that the Supreme Court has abandoned law for politics,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, lead attorney in the case and co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law. “There is no way under the law to make sense of the vast new power the Court has taken for itself. Nor can this ruling be reconciled with the Court’s decisions in many other cases — including recent rulings that allowed lower court orders to block pro-immigrant policies under the Biden administration. Its decisions make perfect sense only if we recognize the truth staring us in the face: the Supreme Court has left the business of law entirely.”
Adelys Ferro, the executive director of the Venezuelan American Caucus, said she was “devastated by the outcome” and called the Supreme Court decision “politically motivated.”
“We expected the Supreme Court to rule without political bias, in favor of the Venezuelan people’s arguments and the protection that had already been granted,” Ferro said.
Justices dissent
In an emergency request last month, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to block the San Francisco federal judge’s ruling. The federal government argued that the lower courts were circumventing the power of the justices and improperly limiting the authority of the Department of Homeland Security.
“As the program’s name suggests, designations shall be temporary,” the Trump administration wrote in a brief to the high court.
Attorneys for the National TPS Alliance, which sued the Trump administration for ending the protections, said that the goverment’s claim that the lower courts were circumventing the Supreme Court were “baseless” and “dangerous.”
They also argued that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem exceeded her executive powers when she ended TPS for Venezuela in the first place. “Defendants make no attempt to defend the Secretary’s rationale,” the lawyers wrote.
Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan made clear they wold have kept Chen’s order in place. In a dissent, Brown quoted President Donald Trump’s own words that Venezuela was facing the “worst humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere in recent memory.” She defended the several rulings from the lower courts protecting TPS and criticized the Supreme Court for casting aside restraint without explaining why.
“We once again use our equitable power... to allow this Administration to disrupt as many lives as possible, as quickly as possible,” she wrote. “I view today’s decision as yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket.”
Dallas resident Marialejandra Lozada is among those whose lives have already been disrupted by the uncertainty around TPS protections. Her husband, 43, has been detained since Sept. 3 after being involved in a car crash — even though he was the victim in the accident. Although he entered the U.S. through an airport and has a pending asylum case, ICE detained him anyway.
“For those of us who love someone in ICE custody, this news is a devastating blow that fills us with uncertainty,” said Lozada, a pastry chef and systems engineer. “This isn’t just about documents — it’s about families who suffer, children waiting for their parents, and spouses fighting every day not to give up. When courts issue rulings, they don’t always see the faces of those of us who are suffering behind those legal words.”
The 44-year-old woman added, “My husband — and thousands of families like mine — are now living in anguish over this decision on TPS. We are not statistics; we are human beings who deserve the chance to live without fear.”
Ongoing litigation
In recent months, more than 400 Venezuelans with TPS have been arrested during ICE check-ins and traffic stops, even though the protections were supposed to be in place before Friday’s ruling. The Miami Herald interviewed more than 30 Venezuelan families who had husbands, brothers and sons detained. Some of the detained were eventually deported to Venezuela despite their TPS status.
The majority of the detentions happened to men that crossed the border with Mexico between 2021 to 2023, but also included women arrested simply for having an expired registration while driving, even though they had come to the U.S. through airports with valid visas.
Emi MacLean, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, who is among the lawyers representing the Venezuelans in the case, told the Herald that the Venezuelan TPS holders are now immediately vulnerable.
“Even before this ruling, the government wasn’t consistently following the protections in place — people were already being detained and deported unlawfully. Now, that risk is even greater,” she said. “While we don’t have evidence that [immigration agents are] actively searching for or targeting TPS holders, any interaction with ICE carries a high risk of immigration consequences.”
MacLean added that Venezuelans with TPS who are currently in custody and lack any other form of protection will now face a serious risk of deportation.
The Biden administration granted Temporary Protected Status to Venezuela in 2021. It cited a “severe humanitarian emergency” marred by economic contraction, deepening poverty, political repression, food shortages, inadequate healthcare, and a collapse of basic services. Two years later, President Biden expanded the protections so more Venezuelans who had arrived in recent years could benefit.
Shortly before Biden left office in January, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas granted an extension of the protections through October 2026 because the conditions in Venezuela warranted it.
But his Trump-appointed successor, Kristi Noem, stripped the extension and moved to eliminate TPS for Venezuela, arguing that conditions had improved and that the designation was not in American interests.
That termination triggered lengthy litigation that continues and has pingponged through the American judicial system. After the National TPS Alliance sued Noem over the termination, Chen issued a preliminary ruling protecting TPS for Venezuelans in March. In May, after the Trump administration petitioned the Supreme Court to intervene, the justices’ blocked that order. Nearly all TPS beneficiaries whose protections had expired in April — about 350,000 — were left without the protections.
Appeals judges as recently as August upheld Chen’s March order. In September, Chen issued a final order ordering the Trump administration to keep the protections through October 2026, as the Biden administration had established.
But on Friday, the Supreme Court shot down that mandate, leaving hundreds of thousands even more fearful of what might happen next as immigration officers round up Venezuelans with TPS throughout the country.
“TPS was a temporary refuge for those of us who fled a dictatorship and an unprecedented crisis in Venezuela,” said Lozada. “Suspending it while appeals are still pending is not only unfair — it’s cruel.”
This story was originally published October 3, 2025 at 5:30 PM.
