'Devastating' Supreme Court order allows Trump to strip TPS protections from Venezuelans

Updated at 8 p.m.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to strip legal protections from 350,000 Venezuelans, potentially exposing them to deportation.

The court's order, with only one noted dissent, puts on hold a ruling from a federal judge in San Francisco that kept in place Temporary Protected Status for the Venezuelans that would have otherwise expired last month. The justices provided no rationale, which is common in emergency appeals.

The status allows people already in the United States to live and work legally because their native countries are deemed unsafe for return due to natural disaster or civil strife.

A federal appeals court had earlier rejected the administration’s request to put the order on hold while the lawsuit continues.

U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, blasted the court ruling, saying it would force Venezuelan immigrants “right back into the hands of a murderous dictator that they had sought refuge from in coming to America.”

“Venezuelan TPS holders fled the [President Nicolas] Maduro regime and built lives in America,” she said in a statement. “They sought refuge in America from his oppression and tyranny."

FILE Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., speaks during a House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing on gun violence on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, June 8, 2022. (5525x3683, AR: 1.5001357588922075)

She urged her congressional colleagues to pass the Venezuela TPS Act of 2025, a bill she has sponsored. It would automatically designate Venezuela for TPS for an initial period of 18 months, with an option for renewal. Her congressional district in South Florida has one of the highest number of Venezuelans in the country.

Venezuelan-American immigration attorney John De la Vega told WLRN the high court did not rule on the actual case being heard in lower federal appeals courts over whether President Trump can in fact cancel TPS.

But De la Vega said the fact that the justices say the administration can move ahead now with making those Venezuelans deportable if it chooses is a heavy blow to Venezuelan expat communities like South Florida’s.

"People are worried right now. There’s a lot of uncertainty because they do not understand the impact that this decision may have," he said.

"They do not know if the administration sends a letter tomorrow to all TPS applicants saying, ‘Hey, listen, the TPS is revoked’ — or, in the best-case scenario, they decide just to wait on the decision on the merits of the case.”

Maureen Porras, an immigration attorney and vice mayor of Doral, called the court’s order “devastating” to her city, which has one of the nation’s largest Venezuelan immigrant communities.


She said the court’s ruling leaves many Venezuelan immigrants “in limbo” pending a final decision in the case.



“They’re finding themselves in a place where they need to decide what to do, whether they want to try to wait out a final decision from the courts or if they want to start preparing to leave the country,” she said.


MORE ON VENEZUELA

• Some progressives blame Latinos for Trump win, rather than Democrats' shortcomings
• 2-year-old girl reunites with her mother in Venezuela after US deportation
• Miami-Dade Democrats post second billboard ad targeting Cuban-American Republicans on immigration

The case is the latest in a string of emergency appeals President Donald Trump's administration has made to the Supreme Court, many of them related to immigration. Last week, the government asked the court to allow it to end humanitarian parole for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, setting them up for potential deportation as well.

The high court also has been involved in legal battles over Trump’s efforts to swiftly deport Venezuelans accused of being gang members to a prison in El Salvador under an 18th century wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act.

The administration has moved aggressively to withdraw various protections that have allowed immigrants to remain in the country, including ending the temporary protected status for a total of 600,000 Venezuelans and 500,000 Haitians. That status is granted in 18-month increments.

The protections had been set to expire April 7, but U.S. District Judge Edward Chen ordered a pause on those plans. He found that the expiration threatened to severely disrupt the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and could cost billions in lost economic activity.

“Our goal is to ensure every voter in Miami-Dade understands the depth of this betrayal."

Chen, who was appointed to the bench by Democratic President Barack Obama, found the government hadn’t shown any harm caused by keeping the program alive.

But Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote on behalf of the administration that Chen’s order impermissibly interferes with the administration’s power over immigration and foreign affairs.

In addition, Sauer told the justices, people affected by ending the protected status might have other legal options to try to remain in the country because the “decision to terminate TPS is not equivalent to a final removal order.”

Congress created TPS in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters or civil strife.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she would have rejected the administration's emergency appeal.

'Betrayal'

The Miami-Dade Democratic Hispanic Caucus pounced on the high court’s order to blame South Florida Republican lawmakers for not doing more to persuade the Trump administration to protect Venezuelan immigrants.

“Our goal is to ensure every voter in Miami-Dade understands the depth of this betrayal,” said Abel S. Delgado, president of the Miami-Dade Democratic Hispanic Caucus, in a statement.

“We will raise our voices until Marco Rubio, María Elvira Salazar, Carlos Giménez, and Mario Díaz-Balart are forced to hear the cries of our community,” he said. “We will not let them turn their backs in silence.”

Delgado’s group funded several billboard ads in the past month along Miami-Dade highways, calling out the Republican Cuban-American politicians. They planned a news conference Monday night to show their solidarity with the region’s Venezuelan community.


On Friday, the Supreme Court had barred the Trump administration from quickly resuming deportations of Venezuelans under an 18th-century wartime law enacted when the nation was just a few years old.

Over two dissenting votes, the justices acted on an emergency appeal from lawyers for Venezuelan men who have been accused of being gang members, a designation that the administration says makes them eligible for rapid removal from the United States under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

The court indefinitely extended the prohibition on deportations from a north Texas detention facility under the alien enemies law. The case will now go back to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which declined to intervene in April.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.