Trump administration unlawfully ended Venezuelans' legal status, US court rules

By Nate Raymond

Jan 29 (Reuters) - A federal appeals court has ruled that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration unlawfully ended legal protections that allowed 600,000 Venezuelans to live and work in the United States temporarily.

A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late on Wednesday upheld a judge's ruling that found Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem exceeded her authority when she ended the temporary protected status Democratic President Joe Biden's administration extended to the Venezuelans.

The ruling will have no immediate effect, as the U.S. Supreme Court in earlier orders, including most recently in October, allowed Noem's February decision to end TPS for Venezuela to take effect until it has a chance to consider hearing the case if the administration continues to appeal.

But it marked the latest legal setback for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's efforts to end TPS for about a dozen countries as part of President Donald Trump's crackdown on immigration.

TPS is available to people whose home country has experienced a natural disaster, armed conflict, or other extraordinary event. It provides eligible migrants with work authorization and temporary protection from deportation.

U.S. Circuit Judge Kim Wardlaw, writing for Wednesday night's panel, said that in the 35 years since Congress created the program, more than 20 countries had received the TPS designation, with no presidential administration claiming authority to terminate a designation until Trump's second term.

Noem's actions "fundamentally contradict Congress’ statutory design, and her assertion of a raw, unchecked power to vacate a country’s TPS is irreconcilable with the plain language of the statute," which bars ending those protections while a TPS designation for a country is in effect, Wardlaw wrote.

She said Noem's actions "have left hundreds of thousands of people in a constant state of fear that they will be deported, detained, separated from their families, and returned to a country in which they were subjected to violence or any other number of harms."

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin in a statement said Trump's move earlier this month to capture Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro and remove him from power meant Venezuelans "can return to the country they love and build its future."

"Temporary means temporary, and this is yet another lawless and activist order from the federal judiciary who continues to undermine our immigration laws," McLaughlin said.

The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by several migrants and the National TPS Alliance, an advocacy group. Jessica Bansal, a lawyer for the plaintiffs at the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, noted that despite the court finding Noem violated the law, Venezuelans will continue to face detention and deportation because of the Supreme Court's order.

"The extent of lawlessness in our immigration system right now is truly difficult to comprehend," she said in a statement.

The ruling by the 9th Circuit panel, comprised only of judges appointed by Democratic presidents, also upheld U.S. District Judge Edward Chen's conclusion that Noem unlawfully terminated TPS for hundreds of thousands of people from Haiti.

The administration has not appealed that part of Chen's September ruling and instead, following a New York judge's separate order, it announced new plans to end TPS for Haitians effective February 3. A federal judge in Washington is expected in the coming days to decide whether to block it from doing so.

U.S. Circuit Judge Salvador Mendoza, in a concurring opinion, said Noem's actions were not only not authorized but also based on "racist stereotyping" against Venezuelans and Haitians.

He pointed to statements made by Trump and Noem, who in television interviews last year described Venezuelan TPS beneficiaries as "dirtbags" and said that Venezuela had "emptied out their prisons, emptied out their mental health facilities, and sent them to the United States of America."

"When decision-makers so brazenly broadcast their racially charged reasons for reaching a decision, we should take them at their word," Mendoza wrote. "To insist otherwise is to render judicial review of agency action a nullity."

The case is National TPS Alliance v Noem, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 25-572.

For the plaintiffs: Ahilan Arulanantham of UCLA School of Law's Center for Immigration Law and Policy

For the government: Sarah Welch of the U.S. Department of Justice

Read more:

US Supreme Court lets Trump strip temporary status from Venezuelan migrants

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