Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, along with Corey Lewandowski, her advisor, have been required to testify under the threat of perjury that they did not use personal communication devices for discussions concerning immigration policies affecting countless individuals.

The directive was handed down by U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim in San Francisco on Tuesday. This pertains to document requests by the National TPS Alliance. The documents are connected to the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to end the 2023 extension of TPS for Venezuelans, as well as individuals from other nations like Haiti. Noem and Lewandowski initially did not provide these documents, arguing they were not pertinent to the demands, which included search terms such as “Temporary Protected Status” and “Tren de Aragua.”

The plaintiffs, however, said that the documents “would be indisputably responsive,” and pushed for them to be turned over. Kim ultimately agreed.

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Noem, through her attorneys, has argued that the release of these documents — specifically from the final week of January — are shielded by executive or presidential communications privileges. Kim, on Tuesday, did not appear to be swayed.

“Secretary Noem and Corey Lewandowski must provide declarations under penalty of perjury that they did not use personal devices to communicate about the TPS status for Venezuelans and Haitians by July 3, 2025,” she wrote in her order as part of the documents she demands the Trump administration produce.

“With regard to the claiming of executive privilege/presidential communications privilege, Defendants must provide a declaration explaining why the executive privilege/presidential communications privilege applies to the six documents in question,” she added, saying, “the documents on their face did not demonstrate” that the privileges applied.

Noem announced in February that she was axing the Biden administration’s extension of TPS for Venezuelans. Without the extension until October 2026, this designation ended on April 7.

The program is designed to allow migrants from countries that are deemed unsafe — typically due to severe violence or natural disasters — to remain in the U.S. and work legally on a temporary basis.

While Noem’s action was contested in the courts, the Supreme Court ultimately sided with the Trump administration and allowed the TPS reversal to proceed — terminating the protected status of more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants.

Still, individual cases have been allowed to continue — such as a case before U.S. District Judge Edward Chen, who sits in San Francisco, when he ruled some 5,000 Venezuelans were not affected by the high court’s ruling.