SCOTUS Just Fine With Trump Revoking Protections For 350,000 Venezuelans In US Legally
Meanwhile, it appears Kristi Noem believes habeas corpus is just the puppies she shot along the way.
The Supreme Court on Monday said the Trump administration can go ahead and cancel protection from deportation for around 350,000 Venezuelans living in the US. The Venezuelans had been granted permission to live and work in the USA by President Joe Biden under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which allows people to be here while conditions in their home countries are too dangerous for them to return. The Court’s unsigned order didn’t explain why it had stayed an injunction issued by a lower federal court, but did note that one justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, “would deny the application” to remove the protections.
Typically, TPS status lasts up to 18 months, but can be extended if conditions in the affected countries remain dicey. Joe Biden first granted TPS to around 250,000 Venezuelans in the US in 2021, and then in 2023 issued a second order extending it and also adding TPS protections to another 350,000 Venezuelans. Biden’s Department of Homeland Security then extended the 2023 TPS declaration in January 2025, just before Donald Trump’s inauguration. Had that extension remained in place, all 600,000 Venezuelans would have kept their legal status until October 2026
Cosplaying Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem canceled that January extension of TPS, immediately revoking protections for the folks added in 2023. Those protected by the original 2021 TPS declaration will remain here legally, but only until their status also expires September 1 this year. Yeah, it’s a little confusing. After all, uncertainty and chaos are central to Trump policies.
The Court’s order Monday immediately ended TPS status for thousands of those Venezuelans, making them subject to deportation. As attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council explained on Bluesky,
Today's action is the single largest mass-illegalization event in US history.
350,000 people woke up this morning with legal status, living and working here with official permission. They'll go to bed as undocumented immigrants facing deportation.
He later added that the exact number of people who are in danger of deportation isn’t clear since many may still have legal status — for the moment at least — if they’ve applied for asylum or have student visas or other status that would give them a chance to fight deportation. As we’ve seen in plenty of cases already, though, the Trump regime sees no reason to respect any form of legal status short of citizenship, and Trump’s first-day executive order made clear that the administration even wants to strip away naturalization under the slightest pretext.
As we say, we have no idea what the Court’s reasoning was for lifting District Judge Edward Chen’s March 31 order barring Noem from revoking TPS, because this was one of those “shadow docket” things with no written opinion or even a vote count. What does stand out from Chen’s order was that he believed there was merit to the plaintiffs’ argument that they were being targeted for deportation because the administration has very loudly insisted that Venezuelans and other immigrants just might all be criminal terrorist gangbanger criminals, though of course Trump simply made up out of nothing the lie that Venezuela and other countries were “emptying their jails” and mental hospitals to send people to the US. Funny how a long, loud record of public animus against non-white immigrants just might undermine a legal filing that pretends to be only about neutral legalities.
Noem specifically justified ending TPS because, among other reasons, some members of the Tren de Aragua gang have allegedly crossed into the US, claims that Chen found “entirely lacking in evidentiary support.”
For example, there is no evidence that Venezuelan TPS holders are members of the TdA gang, have connections to the gang, and/or commit crimes. Venezuelan TPS holders have lower rates of criminality than the general population. Generalization of criminality to the Venezuelan TPS population as a whole is baseless and smacks of racism predicated on generalized false stereotypes.
Chen also noted that there was no support for Noem’s other claims, like saying TPS holders burden communities where they live, noting that they actually are net contributors: “They work, spend money, and pay taxes,” he wrote, pointing out that expelling TPS holders would actually cost the US billions of dollars in tax revenue.
However, those claims and others — particularly the basic fact that it’s still very dangerous to send people back to Venezuela, and nothing has become safer there since Biden granted TPS to Venezeulans in the US — will now have to be addressed as the case moves forward.
We were going to include some of the bullshit the administration has spouted about how the decision proves that Trump can do anything he wants, and about how this supposedly keeps Americans “safe,” but fuck that, because why waste perfectly good electrons even typing up those lies?
We will note, however, that ICE Nazi Barbie probably isn’t the best legal eagle out there, considering the bizarre things she’s said about fundamental constitutional rights. Last week she told a House committee that sure, the administration could suspend the right of habeas corpus because immigration is a literal invasion by a foreign army. Guess she gets her legal advice from Stephen Miller.
Today, Noem demonstrated she’s either a complete fucking idiot or an outrageous fucking liar — if the distinction matters — when she completely blew a very simple question during testimony to the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-New Hampshire) asked Noem a very simple question: What is habeas corpus anyway? Most folks who got at least a B in high school social studies know it’s the right to demand the government tell you what you’re being accused of before it can arrest or jail you, but not Noem:
HASSAN: Secretary Noem, what is habeas corpus?
NOEM: Well habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country …
HASSAN: That's incorrect …
NOEM (crosstalk while Hassan starts to correct her): President Lincoln used it…
HASSAN: Excuse me. Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people. If not for that protection, the government could simply arrest people, including American citizens, and hold them indefinitely for no reason. Habeas corpus is the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea.
Having clarified that basic high school civics question for the head of the nation’s top immigration law enforcement agencies, Hassan asked again if Noem supports “the core protection that habeas corpus provides,” and Noem finally said, in essence, well yeah, whatEVER, Senator lady, but Donald Trump can do what he wants to anyway, because the Constitution says he can. Like Lincoln! She seemed to start saying that Trump “is the best” but we’ll never know if what followed would be “president ever” or “judge of that.”
Then Hassan had to remind the fascistbot that the Constitution reserves the power to suspend habeas corpus to Congress, and that Lincoln actually sought a post facto declaration from Congress because he recognized he’d overstepped. Noem liked that a lot, agreeing that Trump can do that, no problem, shut up senator lady.
The court case against Noem’s TPS revocation will now work its way through the regular appeals process, and it’s likely to eventually make it back to the Supremes, who could conceivably rule in favor of the Venezuelan plaintiffs. Don’t get your hopes up, but sometimes it happens. But Crom only knows how many people who were living and working here legally until Monday will have been deported by the time of that unlikely outcome.
In the meantime, Trump and Noem and every rightwing idiot in America will insist that everyone with TPS, from any country, is actually an illegal criminal because nothing Joe Biden or Barack Obama ever did was legal anyway.
[NBC News / NPR / Law Dork / Washington Times (yes really)]
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OT:
Nipper is out. Operation went well, according to both surgeons. Now waiting for her to wake up.
OT: (sorry Dok)
Nipper is still in surgery. She was whacked to the gills on some sedative before she went in and said "I always want to feel like this" - uh oh. Might be genetic. Anyway, she's still getting her brain messed with.