The Supreme Court on Friday permitted the Trump administration to remove temporary deportation protections for over 300,000 Venezuelan migrants.
In their latest emergency order, the high court paused a ruling by Obama-appointed District Judge Edward Chen from September. Chen had stated that the Trump administration improperly ended an 18-month extension of temporary protected status for Venezuelan migrants.
Liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson opposed the majority in the unsigned order.
“Although the posture of the case has changed, the parties’ legal arguments and relative harms generally have not,” the court wrote.
“The same result that we reached in May is appropriate here,” the opinion stated, referencing a prior decision that overturned a previous stay issued by Chen in the case.
Since the 1990s, the TPS program has granted humanitarian relief to the migrants from several disaster-plagued countries.
The federal program allows migrants to enjoy temporary legal status in the US and obtain work permits.
The Trump administration has been working to retract legal protections afforded to migrants from multiple nations, protections initially granted under former President Joe Biden.
In her dissent, Jackson contended that “TPS statute plainly states” the designation for Venezuelan migrants should remain valid until the end of its ‘most recent previous extension,’” which, before being terminated by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, was set for October 2026.
“By now, our lower court colleagues have determined five times over that this abrupt truncation of the TPS period was unlawful or likely so,” Jackson asserted. “They have done so in reasoned and thoughtful written opinions — opinions that, in a regular process, we would examine, assess, and adopt or oppose, fully explaining our reasoning.”
Jackson also argued that as litigation over Noem’s move to scrap TPS for Venezuelans plays out, lower courts went with the “obvious — i.e., least disruptive and most humane” option, in deciding to allow the migrants to keep their legal protections for the time being – which the Supreme Court has overturned.
“I view today’s decision as yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket,” she added. “This Court should have stayed its hand.”
“Having opted instead to join the fray, the Court plainly misjudges the irreparable harm and balance-of-the-equities factors by privileging the bald assertion of unconstrained executive power over countless families’ pleas for the stability our Government has promised them.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
