A federal appeals court denied an emergency request from the Trump administration to lift a court order blocking the removal of deportation protections from 350,000 Venezuelans.
In a decision issued on Friday, the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals said the Trump administration had failed to demonstrate “irreparable harm” if the order was not lifted. The court therefore declined to issue a stay for Judge Edward Chen’s ruling the maintained Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans.
The decision means that Secretary Kristi Noem’s revocation of TPS status remains blocked. A full judicial hearing on the matter is schedule for the summer.
The Biden administration extended TPS to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in 2021 and 2023, on the basis of humanitarian and political conditions in the South American country. TPS is generally available for nationals of countries that are experiencing extraordinary conditions, such as war and natural disasters, that are judged to prevent safe return.
Secretary Noem had revoked the status for Venezuelans, arguing that conditions in their home country no longer warranted special protections in the US.
Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans were due to lose TPS protections in September.
Half a million Haitian nationals will lose their TPS status in August, after the Department of Homeland Security rescinded it in a separate decision.
Judge Edward Chen decided that the DHS’s decision to remove TPS status from Venezuelans was “unauthorized by law, arbitrary and capricious, and motivated by unconstitutional animus.”
Chen said the decision would have grave consequences for Venezuelans in the US and that the government had “failed to identify any real countervailing harm” in continuing their TPS status.
Attorneys representing Secretary Noem and the DHS argued that Noem acted within her powers and that her decision was not subject to judicial review.
“A single judge took charge of federal immigration policy with respect to Venezuela and supplanted the Executive’s authority over sensitive determinations of the national interest of the United States,” they said.
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