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The US Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to end temporary deportation protections for 300,000 Venezuelans for the second time, giving the government’s unprecedented anti-immigration campaign a boost.
In a brief order, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority allowed the administration to proceed with ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans, despite opposition from the court’s three liberal justices. The decision paves the way for increased risk of deportation for those affected.
The court had pronounced a similar judgment earlier this year, following which a district court in California presented a more permanent ruling against the Trump administration, reopening the case back into the Supreme Court.
“Although the posture of the case has changed, the parties’ legal arguments and relative harms generally have not. The same result that we reached in May is appropriate here,” the court said in its recent ruling.
The decision will put 300,000 people who came from Venezuela to the United States under a two-year humanitarian “parole” program launched by former president Joe Biden at risk of deportation.
The latest case resulted from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem cancelling an 18-month extension of the temporary protected status of the migrants, citing in particular the “authoritarian” nature of Nicolas Maduro’s government in Venezuela.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsUS District Judge Edward Chen, earlier this year, said that Venezuela is “a country so rife with economic and political upheaval and danger that the State Department has warned against travel there “due to the high risk of wrongful detentions, terrorism, kidnapping, the arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, and poor health infrastructure."
The challengers—Venezuelan migrants protected under TPS—argued that Noem’s sudden reversal of the protections violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires federal agencies to follow specific procedures when changing policies. They also claimed that Noem’s decision was driven by racial and political bias.
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