A federal appeals court declined Friday to stay a lower court ruling that prevents the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from revoking Temporary Protected Status for tens of thousands of Venezuelans.
In an unsigned order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied the federal government’s emergency motion to stay the district court’s ruling. The panel quoted a 2020 decision to support a conclusion that the government had not shown that a U.S. District Court injunction caused it sufficient harm. “If we were to adopt the government’s assertion that the irreparable harm standard is satisfied by the fact of executive action alone, no act of the executive branch asserted to be inconsistent with a legislative enactment could be the subject of a preliminary injunction,” it wrote. “That cannot be so.”
The case stems from changes initiated by the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year to the TPS program as applied to Venezuelan nationals. DHS Secretary Kristi Noam “took two illegal actions within one week of assuming her role at the head of” the agency, according to the plaintiffs’ complaint. “Three days after her confirmation, she ‘vacated’ an extension of TPS protections for Venezuelans residing in the United States, just weeks after the extension was duly published in the Federal Register.”
“Two days later, she terminated TPS for the Venezuelans who initially registered in 2023,” the complaint continued. “These actions have the effect of robbing 600,000 Venezuelan TPS holders of the right to live and work in this country for the next 18 months. Approximately 350,000 Venezuelan TPS holders stand to lose this humanitarian legal status on April 7, 2025, and their work authorization as soon as April 2, 2025.”
Plaintiffs argued to the federal district court in San Francisco that those changes are illegal because the Department of Homeland Security cannot revoke the extension granted by the Biden administration in January, before Trump’s inauguration, until it expires. “DHS has no authority to ‘vacate’ a TPS extension,” their lawyers wrote in a motion to postpone the Trump administration’s move to pull back the protection for Venezuelans. “Congress established fixed time periods and procedures for terminations, which can occur only after ‘the expiration of the most recent previous extension,’ not at the whim of Secretaries.”
Plaintiffs also argued that Noem’s decision was “irrational.” They asserted that, although the Trump administration’s DHS claimed the Biden administration illegally permitted re-registration of Venezuelan beneficiaries of the TPS program in 2023, that decision was legal. Finally, the advocates for the refugees pointed to alleged “discriminatory intent” on Noem’s part. “[D]ecisions grounded even in part on racial animus cannot stand,” the motion proclaimed. “Secretary Noem made numerous contemporaneous statements that prove her decisions sprung at least in part from racial animus,” the plaintiffs argued. “She has justified expelling Venezuelan immigrants with racial stereotypes, labeling them as ‘dirt bags,’ ‘criminals,’ and ‘vicious,’ supposedly rendering the U.S. unsafe, on the assumption that many, if not all, are gang members, ex-convicts, or escaped from mental institutions, even though there is no evidence for these assertions and the TPS statute effectively forecloses them through its criminal history bars.”
As further justification to block the Noem move, plaintiffs invoked a litany of possible harms. “If TPS holders lose their legal status, many of them will be at immediate risk of detention at the hands of ICE officials and, potentially, immediate deportation,” they asserted. “Those not arrested will be in a state of limbo—undocumented and without legal authorization to live and work in the United States, but with nowhere to go. Many Venezuelan TPS holders simply cannot safely return to Venezuela because they will suffer severe harm at the hands of the Maduro regime, while others could not return even if they wanted to because they cannot renew their passports.”
“Most devastating to many TPS holders is the prospect of family separation,” the motion continued. “Many Venezuelan TPS holders could be separated from their U.S. citizen children and other family members, while others will be forced to bring their U.S. citizen children to an unknown country facing political and economic collapse.”
The government argued that the statute governing TPS does not allow for judicial review of the HHS secretary’s decision and that Noem was not motivated by any animus toward Venezuelans. It also claimed that any harms the plaintiffs might suffer by losing TPS status inevitably result from the underlying statutory authorization for the program.
In his March 31 decision, U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen granted a preliminary injunction that blocked the DHS move. Chen largely agreed with the plaintiffs’ view of the case. “The unprecedented action of vacating existing TPS (a step never taken by any previous administration in the 35 years of the TPS program),” he wrote, justified an injunction. “[T]he Secretary’s action threatens to: inflict irreparable harm on hundreds of thousands of persons whose lives, families, and livelihoods will be severely disrupted, cost the United States billions in economic activity, and injure public health and safety in communities throughout the United States.”
The Department of Justice asked the Ninth Circuit to stay the injunction, arguing that the injunction would cause irreparable harm by preventing DHS from carrying out what the administration described as a coordinated response to changing trends of migration from Venezuela and national security risks. The panel of appellate judges that rejected the request did not address the merits of the government’s claims.
Under the Temporary Protected Status program at issue in the case, individuals from designated countries are allowed to live and work in the United States if returning to their home country would pose a danger due to armed conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary conditions.
Venezuela’s designation was first announced in 2021.
The National TPS Alliance and several individual plaintiffs filed the lawsuit.
About Author
Be First to Comment