Supreme Court allows Trump to shut down deportation amnesty for Venezuelans

The Supreme Court has ruled that the Trump administration can shut down Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans, ending a Biden-era deportation amnesty that had protected hundreds of thousands of migrants.

The justices, in an unsigned order Friday, said President Trump can end the program — which means he can carry out deportations of those who were previously in it — while the legal battle rages in lower courts.

It’s the second time the court has had to weigh in and slap down a district judge who ruled against Mr. Trump’s wind-down, accusing him and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of racist motives.

The justices didn’t address those accusations in their order, but said its own reasoning that Mr. Trump can carry out the shutdown remains the same as before.

The court’s three Democratic appointees announced their dissent.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pointed out that it was Mr. Trump, at the end of his first term, who first decided Venezuelans needed humanitarian protections. He personally issued an order of protection, which the Biden administration converted into TPS.

Then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas renewed the TPS several times, including just before he left office.

Ms. Noem then sought to revoke that renewal and end the status early.

Justice Jackson, echoing lower courts, said the law doesn’t appear to allow for an early termination.

She said those opinions should stand until the high court has a chance to deal with the issue head-on. She chastised the court’s majority for staying the rulings — and effectively making hundreds of thousands of migrants instantly deportable.

“I view today’s decision as yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket. This Court should have stayed its hand,” she said.

The ruling, a serious victory for Mr. Trump, is the latest in a string of high court cases where the justices have given the president major leeway to enforce immigration law.

TPS has become a sort of loophole to that regular law.

It was intended to be a temporary measure for nations facing disasters, war, famine, epidemic or political instability, giving them a chance to recover and their citizens a safe haven in that time.

In practice, it’s become a major circumvention of immigration law.

Several hundred thousand Central American migrants have been living in the U.S. under TPS since the turn of the century.

The Biden administration was particularly generous with the designations, adding some 800,000 people to the TPS rolls.

Venezuelans accounted for a majority of those new additions, with Haitians the runner-up.

Revocation of Haiti’s TPS was part of the legal battle in the lower court but the Trump administration did not ask the high court to review that aspect of the case at this time.

Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the administration shouldn’t have had to go to the high court twice to reel in the TPS designation, but she said the court’s ruling is “a win for the American people and common sense.”

“Now that it’s clear the law and the American people are on our side, Secretary Noem will continue to use every tool at our disposal to prioritize the safety of all U.S. citizens,” she said.