A federal judge had blocked the administration’s plan to remove the temporary protected status of more than 300,000 immigrants.
The Supreme Court on Monday let the Trump administration, for now, remove protections from nearly 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants who had been allowed to remain in the United States without risk of deportation under a program known as Temporary Protected Status.
The court’s brief order was unsigned and gave no reasons, which is typical when the justices rule on emergency applications. No vote count was listed, although Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that she would deny the administration’s request.
The justices announced they would allow the Trump administration to end the protections pending appeal of the case, potentially allowing the administration to move ahead with deportations. The justices also clarified, however, that they would preserve the ability of individual immigrants to bring some legal challenges if the government tried to cancel their work permits or to remove them from the country.
The court has been inundated with applications arising from President Trump’s blitz of executive orders, many of them seeking to pause or limit trial court rulings blocking the administration’s aggressive agenda, notably in immigration.
This case started in February, when Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, terminated an 18-month extension of Temporary Protected Status that had been granted to Venezuelans by the Biden administration. People affected by the change sued, saying that the move violated administrative procedures and was influenced by racial bias.
In March, Judge Edward M. Chen of the Federal District Court in San Francisco blocked the administration’s efforts to remove the protections while the case moved forward. He said the plaintiffs had demonstrated that they were likely to succeed in showing that Ms. Noem’s actions had been “unauthorized by law, arbitrary and capricious, and motivated by unconstitutional animus.”
