U.S. Supreme Court
SCOTUS allows Trump administration to rescind protected status for Venezuelans
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to rescind temporary protected status for Venezuelans in the United States while a challenge to the decision continues. (Image from Shutterstock)
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to rescind temporary protected status for Venezuelans in the United States while a challenge to the decision continues.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only noted dissenter to the May 19 order.
The government had asked the Supreme Court to grant emergency relief that would lift a “sweeping” March 31 order by a federal judge in San Francisco who temporarily blocked the government’s decision to revoke protected status.
In his decision, Senior U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen of the Northern District of California said the rescission of protected status would “shortly strip nearly 350,000” Venezuelans of protected status, putting them at risk of deportation to a home country that is “rife with economic and political upheaval.”
Congress authorized the government to grant temporary protected status to immigrants whose home countries are afflicted by natural disasters, armed conflict or other extraordinary conditions.
The U.S. Department of Justice had argued that the temporary protected status program “implicates particularly discretionary, sensitive and foreign-policy-laden judgments of the executive branch regarding immigration policy.” The statute governing the program gives the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security discretion to make “sensitive judgment calls” about whether allowing temporary status is in the government’s national interest, the government brief said.
The plaintiffs challenging the rescission had argued that lifting Chen’s order “would cause far more harm than it would stop. It would radically shift the status quo, stripping plaintiffs of their legal status and requiring them to return to a country the State Department still deems too dangerous even to visit.”
The Supreme Court’s order still allows individual challenges to invalidation of employment authorizations and notices regarding removals, according to news coverage by the Washington Post, the New York Times and Law360.
The case is Noem v. National TPS Alliance.
The SCOTUSblog case page is here, and a National TPS Alliance informational page is here.
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