The US Supreme Court has said it will allow the Trump administration to terminate deportation protections for some 350,000 Venezuelans in the US.
The ruling lifts a hold that was placed by a California judge that kept Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in place for Venezuelans whose status’ would have expired last month.
Temporary Protected Status allows people to live and work in the US legally if their home countries are deemed unsafe due to things like countries experiencing wars, natural disasters or other “extraordinary and temporary” conditions.
The ruling marks a win for US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly tried to use the Supreme Court to enact immigration policy decisions.
The Trump administration wanted to end protections and work permits for migrants with TPS in April 2025, more than a year before they were originally supposed to end in October 2026.
Lawyers representing the US government argued that the California federal court, the US District Court for the Northern District of California, had undermined “the Executive Branch’s inherent powers as to immigration and foreign affairs” when it stopped the administration from ending protections and work permits in April.
Ahilan Arulanantham, who represents TPS holders in the case, told the BBC he believes this to be “the largest single action stripping any group of non-citizens of immigration status in modern US history”.
“That the Supreme Court authorised this action in a two-paragraph order with no reasoning is truly shocking,” Mr Arulanantham said.
“The humanitarian and economic impact of the Court’s decision will be felt immediately and will reverberate for generations.”
Because it was an emergency appeal, justices on the Supreme Court did not provide a reasoning for the ruling.
The court’s order only noted one judge’s dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
In August, the Trump administration is also expected to revoke TPS protections for tens of thousands of Haitians.
The ruling on Monday by the Supreme Court marks the latest in a series of decisions on immigration policies from the high court that the Trump administration has left them to rule on.
Last week, the administration asked the Supreme Court to end humanitarian parole for hundreds of thousands of Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan immigrants.
Along with some of their successes, the Trump administration was dealt a blow on Friday when the high court blocked Trump from using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants in North Texas.
Trump had wanted to use the centuries-old law to swiftly deport thousands from the US, but Supreme Court judges questioned if the president’s action was legal.
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