Judge pauses Trump administration plans to end temporary legal protections for Venezuelans

Members of the advocacy group Arriba Las Vegas traveled to San Francisco to rally outside a federal courthouse March 24 during a hearing to block the Trump administration’s attempt to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants. Photo by: Courtesy photo

A federal judge this afternoon temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants who would’ve soon lost that shield. 

Their status will not change while the case is ongoing.

TPS is granted to people from countries currently experiencing a civil war, natural disaster or other temporary destabilizing event making it difficult to safely return.

After the Biden administration previously extended protections for Venezuelan migrants in January, President Donald Trump and new Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem attempted to roll back the extension.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco wrote in his decision that the government did not demonstrate that any harm would occur by letting TPS holders from Venezuela stay in the United States while the case is contested.

Chen also wrote that the lawsuit’s plaintiffs—including the National TPS Alliance, which represents over 80,000 Venezuelan TPS holders—would “likely succeed” in showing that Noem’s actions were “unauthorized by law, arbitrary and capricious, and motivated by unconstitutional animus.”

Francis Garcia, a 48-year-old Las Vegas resident on TPS after immigrating from Honduras, said in a news conference Monday that she was shaking when she got the news.

“The only way to maintain these fights—to make sure that the families are going to be together—the only way we do it (is) together,” Garcia said. “I have the faith in God, in the plaintiffs and other lawyers and also in the judge that this is the country of justice. Nobody can avoid that.”

Garcia, an organizer with immigrant worker advocacy group Arriba Las Vegas, went to San Francisco with other members of the organization to rally outside the courthouse on March 24 during the last hearing.

“I was thinking (Trump’s) going to be more smart in the way he’s going to do it, but he’s making the same mistakes,” Garcia told the Sun last week.

The judge also pushed back against some of the claims Noem made about Venezuelans while explaining her decisions on TPS to the media, including that TPS holders from the country are connected to the Tren de Aragua gang.

Racist sentiment fueling policy was also key in the 2018 lawsuit challenging Trump’s first-term attempt to end TPS, but lawyers noted the connection was even stronger in today’s decision.

Ahilan Arulanantham, the faculty co-director of UCLA’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy, said the previous case relied on Trump’s comments influencing Homeland Security. This time, in addition to Trump’s words, the plaintiff’s lawyers were able to use Noem’s comments.

Arulanantham mentioned the secretary’s appearance on Meet the Press where she said Venezuela emptied its prisons and mental institutions to send people to the United States. 

“After repeating this lie, she said, ‘So we had made this decision to end the program,’” the co-director said. “There’s a lot of evidence in this case that’s comparable to what was in (the 2018 lawsuit). There’s actually never any evidence that is direct.”