(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Monday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to move toward ending temporary deportation protections for potentially hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.
At issue is a form of humanitarian relief known as Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelan migrants. Seven Venezuelan nationals who are covered by TPS and a group that represents others challenged the move, arguing in part that the decision was motivated by racial and political hostility.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to note her dissent.
Earlier this year, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem moved to end TPS status for Venezuelan migrants, with more than 300,000 Venezuelans in the US set to lose those protections next week. Another 250,000 immigrants who arrived before 2023 are scheduled to lose their status in September.
A central issue in the proceedings was whether Noem had the authority to wipe away the existing TPS designation before it was scheduled to expire.
The Biden administration first granted TPS for Venezuelans in March 2021, citing the increased instability in the country, and expanded it in 2023. Two weeks before Trump took office, the Biden administration renewed protections for an additional 18 months. Monday’s ruling applies to the 2023 designation.
The challengers, Venezuelan migrants covered under TPS, contended that Noem’s abrupt reversal of the protections violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which mandates specific procedures for federal agencies when implementing policy changes. They also argued that Noem’s decision was motivated by racial and political bias.
A federal district court in California temporarily blocked Noem’s order in late March, preventing the removal of protections for more than 300,000 Venezuelans who were set to lose them in early April.
US District Judge Edward Chen, nominated to the bench by former President Barack Obama, described Venezuela as “a country so rife with economic and political upheaval and danger that the State Department” has warned against travel there “‘due to the high risk of wrongful detentions, terrorism, kidnapping, the arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, poor health infrastructure.’”
Congress created the TPS program in 1990, allowing the federal government to provide temporary protection for migrants from countries enduring natural disasters, wars and other conditions that would make it dangerous for people to return. At the end of the first Trump administration, officials described Venezuela as “the worst humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere” and granted a different form of temporary relief to some of its migrants.
This story has been updated with additional details.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
