A federal judge on Monday suspending the Trump administration’s plans, ending temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, and was scheduled to expire.
San Francisco’s US District Judge Edward Chen’s order is the relief for 350,000 Venezuelans whose temporary protected status is due to expire on April 7th. The lawsuit was filed by lawyers for the National TPS Alliance and TPS holders in the country.
Homeland Security Secretary Christi Noem announced the end of the TPS for an estimated 250,000 Venezuelans in September.
Chen said in control of Noem’s lawsuit, “threatening: severely disrupted families, families and livelihoods, cost billions of dollars in US economic activity, and irreparable harm to hundreds of thousands of people who undermine the safety of public health in communities across the United States.”
He said the government could not identify “the true treasonable harm in the continuation of the TPS for the Venezuelan beneficiaries,” and the plaintiffs probably would succeed in showing that Noem’s actions were “law, arbitrary, whimsical, and motivated by the irrational animus.”
Chen, who was appointed to the bench by Democrat Obama, said his orders would apply nationwide.
He submitted a weekly notice to the government to file a notice of appeal, and for a week he submitted a suspension of 500,000 Haitians whose TPS protection expired in August. Former secretary Alejandro Mayorkas expanded all three cohorts to 2026.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
As the law is known, Congress created a TPS in 1990 to prevent deportation to countries suffering from natural disasters and civil conflicts, allowing people to live and work in the United States for up to 18 months if the Secretary of Homeland Security determines that the conditions of their home country are not safe for their return.
The reversal was a major face from immigration policy under former President Biden, with Trump and his top aides attacking the judges who control them, and repeated attacks as immigrants were at the forefront of many disagreements.
At last Monday’s hearing, the attorney for the TPS holder said NOEM had no authority to cancel protections and that her actions were in part motivated by racism. They asked the judge to suspend Noem’s orders, citing the irreparable harm to TPS holders suffering from the fear of deportation and the fear of potential separation from their families.
The NOEM government lawyer said that Congress gave the secretary clear and broad authority to make decisions related to the TPS program, saying the decision is not subject to judicial review. The plaintiffs have no right to block the secretary’s orders from carrying out, they said.
However, Chen discovers that the government’s argument is not obscure, showing that Noem on Venezuelans as criminals, and many of Trump’s misleading and false comments, as well as the incentives of racial animus to end the protection.
“Being on negative group stereotypes and generalizing such stereotypes across groups is a classic example of racism,” he writes.
Biden has rapidly expanded the use of TPS and other temporary forms of protection in its strategy to create and expand legal pathways for living in the United States while halting asylum for people entering illegally.
Trump questioned the fairness of federal judges who blocked plans to expel Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador, and leveled his criticism hours before his administration asked the court of appeals to lift the judge’s order.
The administration also said it has revoked temporary protections for more than 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who have come to the United States since October 2022 and have come to the United States through another legal measure called humanitarian parole, which Biden used more than any other president. Their two-year work permits expire on April 24th.
Har writes for the Associated Press.
