The Trump administration on Thursday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to support its push to end Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for more than 350,000 Venezuelans – a move that could pave the way for mass deportations.
The request follows a March ruling by U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in California, who temporarily blocked the plan and sharply criticized Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s effort to strip deportation protections. Chen said the proposal “smacks of racism” and unfairly portrays Venezuelans as criminals.
“Acting on the basis of a negative group stereotype and generalizing such stereotype to the entire group is the classic example of racism,” Chen wrote.
Solicitor General John Sauer filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority, asking it to stay the judge’s order.
“So long as the order is in effect, the 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,’” Sauer said.
In addition, “the district court’s decision undermines the executive branch’s inherent powers as to immigration and foreign affairs,” he added.
Former President Joe Biden extended TPS for Venezuelans by 18 months just days before Donald Trump returned to the White House in January.
The United States grants TPS to citizens of countries that cannot safely return home due to war, natural disasters or other “extraordinary” conditions.
Trump campaigned on a promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Several of his immigration-related executive orders have faced legal challenges.
Separately, a federal judge in Texas ruled Thursday that Trump’s use of a wartime law to summarily deport alleged Venezuelan gang members was unlawful.
U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez, a Trump appointee, blocked deportations under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act from his Southern Texas district, specifically targeting alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang.
Trump invoked the rarely used law – last broadly enforced during World War II to detain Japanese Americans – on March 15 and deported two planeloads of alleged gang members to El Salvador’s maximum-security CECOT prison.
While the Supreme Court and other district courts have temporarily paused removals under the law due to due process concerns, Rodriguez is the first federal judge to rule its use unlawful.
