WASHINGTON D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court Friday again allowed the Trump administration to strip temporary protections for more than 300,000 Venezuelans, opening them up for quick deportations as the president continues with his plans for mass deportations.
The conservative justices granted, 6-3, President Donald Trump’s request from last month to pause a federal judge’s ruling that found Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem lacked the authority to revoke Temporary Protected Status granted to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants under the Biden administration.
All three liberal justices sided with the lower court, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson writing a dissent with the conservative Supreme Court majority. She criticized the high court’s use of the emergency docket, also known as the shadow docket, which can allow the justices to avoid explaining their reasoning for decisions brought on an emergency basis.
“We once again use our equitable power (but not our opinion-writing capacity) to allow this Administration to disrupt as many lives as possible, as quickly as possible,” Jackson wrote.
The conservative justices did not explain their reasoning but said the harms faced by the Trump administration remained the same as when the case was first brought to the high court in May.
Jackson said that not only were the lower courts correct in their orders to block the removal of TPS protections to limit harm, but that the Supreme Court should have denied the emergency request from the Trump administration.
“Having opted instead to join the fray, the Court plainly misjudges the irreparable harm and balance-of-the-equities factors by privileging the bald assertion of unconstrained executive power over countless families’ pleas for the stability our Government has promised them,” Jackson wrote.
“Because, respectfully, I cannot abide our repeated, gratuitous, and harmful interference with cases pending in the lower courts while lives hang in the balance, I dissent,” she continued.
The suit in the Northern District of California will continue despite Friday’s emergency ruling from the high court.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that Noem had the authority to revoke extended protections initially granted to Venezuelans under the Biden administration.
Former President Joe Biden granted TPS for Venezuelans who came to the U.S. in 2021 and 2023. Those TPS protections were set to last until October 2026.
TPS is granted when a national’s home country is deemed too dangerous to return to due to violence, political instability or extreme natural disasters. It’s renewed every 18 months and protects immigrants from deportation and allows them access to work permits.
This is the second time the Trump administration has appealed to the high court to allow it to end TPS protections for Venezuelans. In late May, the Supreme Court paved the way for the Trump administration to temporarily terminate TPS for more than 300,000 Venezuelans while the case continued in lower courts.
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