Supreme Court lets Trump strip Venezuelan migrants of protected status

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on May 19 said the Trump administration can strip more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants of temporary protected status, a win for President Donald Trump's efforts to ramp up deportations.

A federal judge had blocked the administration from abruptly ending a program that allowed the migrants to live and work temporarily in the United States due to living conditions in their country.

The Justice Department argued courts don’t have the authority to review decisions by the Homeland Security secretary “in this fast-moving area of foreign affairs.”

Lawyers for the Venezuelans responded that “it should be uncontroversial that federal courts say what the law is.”

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in Northern California ruled in March that ending the program could harm hundreds of thousands of people, cost the economy billions of dollars and hurt public health and safety. He also said the government had failed to identify any real harm in keeping the program in place while the migrants are challenging its termination.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in February ordered an end to the program called Temporary Protected Status. She concluded that the immigrants burden local governments and said some Venezuelans were members of the gang Tren de Aragua, which President Donald Trump has declared a foreign terrorist organization.

The advocacy group National TPS Alliance and a handful of Venezuelans sued, arguing it’s not safe for them to return to their home country.

Venezuelans have been living under the autocratic regime of Nicolás Maduro for more than a decade amid runaway inflation, worsening poverty and widespread political persecution, according to the Washington Office on Latin America, a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C.

Chen, the California federal court judge, noted that Venezuela remains "so rife with economic and political upheaval and danger that the State Department has categorized Venezuela as a 'Level 4: Do Not Travel' country 'due to the high risk of wrongful detentions, terrorism, kidnapping, the arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, poor health infrastructure.'"

Despite Noem's negative stereotypes and aspersions, Chen wrote, TPS beneficiaries have a higher education on average than most Americans, with about half holding bachelor's degrees, and a high rate of labor participation, contributing billions to the economy.