A federal appeals court in the United States has blocked Donald Trump’s attempt to terminate protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans allowed to live and work in the country.
The ninth US circuit court of appeals on Friday upheld an earlier ruling that temporary protected status (TPS) for Venezuelans must remain in place while legal challenges proceed. The three-judge panel said plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their claim that the Trump administration acted unlawfully in seeking to end the programme.
The judges found that Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, had no authority to revoke a prior extension of TPS, as the statute governing the scheme did not permit it. The measure had been extended by Joe Biden’s administration when he was president.
“In enacting the TPS statute, Congress designed a system of temporary status that was predictable, dependable, and insulated from electoral politics,” judge Kim Wardlaw wrote in the court’s opinion. The panel was made up entirely of judges appointed by Democratic presidents.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security condemned the ruling, describing it as obstruction by “unelected activist” judges. A spokesperson said the programme had been “abused, exploited, and politicised as a de facto amnesty” and vowed that Noem would pursue all legal options to end it.
TPS was created under the Immigration Act of 1990 and allows the homeland security secretary to grant legal status to people from countries facing war, natural disaster or other extraordinary conditions. Terms are issued in six, 12 or 18-month periods, giving recipients the chance to work, secure housing and build stability.
Soon after Trump entered office, Noem declared that conditions in Venezuela had improved and said it was not in the national interest to allow migrants from there to remain. The move formed part of a broader effort to reduce numbers of immigrants in the US, whether undocumented or on temporary programmes.
In March, Edward Chen, a district judge in San Francisco, ruled that the government had overstepped its authority by ending the protections, and postponed their termination. However, the supreme court later reversed that order without explanation.
Friday’s ruling leaves uncertain the position of about 350,000 Venezuelans whose protections expired in April. Lawyers say some have already lost jobs, been detained or deported, and in some cases separated from their US citizen children. The remaining 250,000 face the expiry of their status on 10 September.
Emi MacLean, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, welcomed the decision. “What is really significant now is that the second court unanimously recognised that the trial court got it right,” she said. Although the ruling may not immediately benefit those who have already lost their status, she said it “should provide a path for the administration’s illegal actions related to Venezuela and TPS to finally be undone”.
