Washington — A federal judge in California ruled Friday that the Trump administration’s attempt to end the Temporary Protected Status program for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan and Haitian migrants was unlawful.
The move by U.S. District Judge Edward Chen effectively sets aside the administration’s attempt to end temporary legal protections and work permits for certain people from Venezuela and Haiti — unless his ruling is overturned on appeal. Chen ruled in favor of the National TPS Alliance, an organization that represents TPS holders across the country, and a group of Venezuelan migrants who received protections under the program.
“This case arose from action taken post haste by the current DHS Secretary, Kristi Noem, to revoke the legal status of Venezuelan and Haitian TPS holders, sending them back to conditions that are so dangerous that even the State Department advises against travel to their home countries,” Chen wrote in a 69-page decision. “The Secretary’s action in revoking TPS was not only unprecedented in the manner and speed in which it was taken but also violates the law.”
In May, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end the TPS program for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, freezing an earlier ruling by Chen.
Chen said that decision concerned only preliminary relief he ordered that postponed the Department of Homeland Security’s actions. The high court’s order, he said, did not bar him from adjudicating the case on the merits or issuing relief under the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law that governs the agency rulemaking process.
The Justice Department will likely appeal the decision.
The Department of Homeland Security criticized the ruling in a statement, and said Noem will “use every legal option at the Department’s disposal to end this chaos and prioritize the safety of Americans.”
“For decades the TPS program has been abused, exploited, and politicized as a de facto amnesty program. Its use has been all the more dangerous given the millions of unvetted illegal aliens the Biden Administration let into this country,” the statement read.
Congress in 1990 established the Temporary Protected Status program, which allows the federal government to provide temporary immigration protections for migrants from countries experiencing wars, natural disasters, or other “extraordinary and temporary” conditions that make it dangerous to send deportees there. The program lets TPS holders temporarily remain in the U.S. and apply for renewable work permits.
During the Biden administration, the Department of Homeland Security designated Venezuela, which is the largest country included in the TPS program, covering roughly 600,000 migrants. It also created or expanded programs for Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti and Ukraine. The Biden administration had extended the TPS designations for Venezuela and Haiti.
After President Trump returned to the White House for his second term, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem first sought to reverse the TPS extension for Venezuela, and then moved to terminate the designation altogether. She also sought to unwind TPS protections for Haitians and migrants of several other countries.
The National TPS Alliance and Venezuelan TPS holders filed their lawsuit challenging Noem’s decisions in February and argued she did not have the authority to unilaterally roll back the extension granted by her predecessor.
In his decision against the Trump administration, Chen said Noem’s attempts to reverse the TPS extensions granted by the Biden administration were “extraordinary and unusual,” and marked the first time in the program’s 35-year-history that such a step had been taken. He called the decision-making process surrounding the move “truncated and condensed,” and said Noem failed to consult the appropriate agencies.
“As a matter of law, the Secretary lacked the implicit authority to vacate. Even if she had such authority, there is no genuine dispute that she exceeded that authority,” he wrote.
