SAN FRANCISCO, June 1 — A federal judge prevented the Trump administration from invalidating work permits and other documents granting lawful status to about 5,000 Venezuelans, a subset of the nearly 350,000 whose temporary legal protections the United States Supreme Court last week allowed to be terminated.
US District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco in a Friday night ruling concluded that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem likely exceeded her authority when she in February invalidated those documents while more broadly ending the temporary protected status granted to the Venezuelans.
The US Supreme Court on May 19 lifted an earlier order Chen issued that prevented the administration as part of President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration agenda from terminating deportation protection conferred to Venezuelans under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) programme, but the high court stated specifically it was not preventing any Venezuelans from still challenging Noem’s related decision to invalidate documents they were issued pursuant to that program that allowed them to work and live in the US.
Such documents were issued after the US Homeland Security Department, during former Democratic President Joe Biden’s final days in office, extended the TPS programme for Venezuelans by 18 months to October 2026, an action Noem sought to reverse.
TPS is available to people whose home country has experienced a natural disaster, armed conflict or other extraordinary event.
Lawyers for several Venezuelans and the advocacy group National TPS Alliance asked Chen to recognise the documents’ continuing validity, saying that without them, migrants could lose their jobs or be deported.
Chen in siding with them said nothing in the statute authorising the TPS programme allowed Noem to invalidate the documents.
Chen, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, noted the administration estimated that only about 5,000 of the 350,000 Venezuelans held such documents.
“This smaller number cuts against any contention that the continued presence of these TPS holders who were granted TPS-related documents by the secretary would be a toll on the national or local economies or a threat to national security,” Chen wrote.
Homeland Security Department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin in a statement said the “ruling delays justice and seeks to kneecap the president’s constitutionally vested powers”.
Chen ruled hours after the US Supreme Court in a different case on Friday allowed Trump’s administration to end the temporary immigration “parole” granted to 532,000 Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants under a different Biden-era programme.
— Reuters
