The U.S. Supreme Court allowed Donald Trump’s administration to strip temporary protected status from approximately 350,000 Venezuelans living in the United States, granted under his predecessor Joe Biden.
This decision is part of Trump’s hardline approach to immigration, aiming to ramp up deportations.
The court granted the Justice Department’s request to lift a San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Edward Chen’s order.
Chen’s order had halted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to terminate deportation protection for Venezuelans under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program.
However the court’s brief order was unsigned, typical for emergency requests. However, it left open the door for challenges if the administration seeks to invalidate work permits or TPS-related documents expiring in October 2026.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson who is the sole member of the court to publicly dissent from the decision.Granting the administration’s request would strip work authorization from nearly 350,000 people, expose them to deportation to an unsafe country, and cost billions in economic losses nationwide.
Currently advises against travel to Venezuela due to high risks of wrongful detentions, terrorism, kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and poor health infrastructure.
The U.S. government under Biden designated Venezuela for TPS in 2021 and 2023, with an extension to October 2026. Trump has pledged to deport record numbers of migrants in the U.S. illegally and strip certain migrants of temporary legal protections.The Trump administration terminated TPS for thousands of Afghans and Cameroonians in the United States in April.
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