Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration to Strip Protections from Venezuelan Migrants

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled in an emergency order that the Trump Administration can remove legal protections from thousands of Venezuelan migrants, potentially putting them at risk of deportation.

The decision will allow the Administration to reverse a decision made under former President Biden to extend Venezuelans’ eligibility for Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which grants foreign nationals work authorization, protects them from deportation, and allows them to travel.

Eligibility for the protections was set to expire for Venezuelans in October 2026, after former Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas extended the 2023 Venezuela TPS designation. But in February, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sought to reverse that extension and make the protections expire this October instead.

A San Francisco federal judge barred the Administration from terminating TPS for Venezuelans in a March ruling. But the nation’s highest court issued a stay on Monday, allowing the Administration’s new policy to remain in place while litigation over the decision continues in the lower courts. 

More than 300,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. have TPS. The status does not offer recipients a legal pathway to citizenship.

More than a dozen countries, including Haiti and Nicaragua, are currently designated for TPS. In March, Noem also moved to cancel TPS protections for Afghanistan.

The order says that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the application.