Cnn
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The Supreme Court paved the way on the administration of President Donald Trump on Monday to eliminate temporary expulsion protections from potentially hundreds of thousands of venezuelans.
In a brief unsigned order, a majority of the high court judged that the administration could go ahead with its plans to put an end to a form of humanitarian aid known as temporary protected status – a decision which, according to immigration lawyers, makes it more vulnerable to deportation.
The decision of the court was strongly criticized by the defenders of the rights of immigrants.
Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law, who had represented the Venezuelans involved in the case, described the decision as “the largest unique action stripping any group of non-citizens of immigration status in the history of the modern United States”.
But in a second cryptic paragraph of the ordinance, the court noted that it did not weigh if the administration could revoke the work permissions and other advantages of the TP which had already been issued after the Biden administration extended the status in January. It was not immediately clear how many people may have received these services or how the decision would apply to them.
It is unlikely that the court decision will be the last step. The case will now go to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will examine the underlying decisions taken by the Trump administration to revoke the TPS status for the Venezuelans.
The question is a form of humanitarian aid known as temporary protected status for Venezuelan migrants. Seven Venezuelan nationals who are covered by the TPS and a group that represents others challenged this decision, stressing in part that the decision was motivated by racial and political hostility.
Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only judge to note his dissent.
Several lawyers involved in the case criticized the lack of clarity in the prescription of the High Court, which, according to them, will have the practical effect of letting the Trump administration take a first blow to define how it will be implemented.
Arulanantham, addressing journalists about an hour after order, called him “impossible to understand”.
“The Supreme Court did not explain why she had made the order,” said Jessica Bansal, a lawyer who also worked on the case on behalf of the complainants. “The case now continues under the shadow of an unexplained order with two paragraphs with a clear impact.”
Earlier this year, internal security secretary Kristi Noem has moved to end the status of TPS for Venezuelan migrants, with more than 300,000 Venezuelans in the United States which should lose these protections in early April. 250,000 other immigrants who arrived before 2023 should lose their status in September.
A central question in the procedure was whether Noem had the power to wipe the existing TPS designation before it was planned to expire.
The Biden Administration first granted TP for the Venezuelans in March 2021, citing increased instability in the country, and extended it in 2023. Two weeks before Trump took office, the Biden administration has renewed protections for an additional 18 months. The decision on Monday applies to the designation of 2023.
The challengers, the Venezuelan migrants covered by the TPS, argued that the steep inversion of Noem of the protections had violated the law on administrative procedure, which imposes specific procedures for federal agencies during the implementation of changes in policy. They also argued that Noem’s decision was motivated by racial and political prejudices.
A California Federal District Court temporarily blocked Noem’s order at the end of March.
US District Judge Edward Chen, appointed to the bench by former president Barack Obama, described Venezuela as “a country so shaved with economic and political upheavals and a danger that the State Department” warned travel “due to the high risk of local law, civilian disorders, terrorism, poor health infrastructure”.
The Congress created the TPS program in 1990, allowing the federal government to provide temporary protection to migrants against countries that tighten natural disasters, wars and other conditions that would make people dangerous to return. At the end of the first Trump administration, officials described Venezuela as “the worst humanitarian crisis in the Western hemisphere” and granted a different form of temporary relief to some of its migrants.
This story has been updated with additional details.
