The US Supreme Court has granted an emergency order allowing Donald Trump's administration to remove legal protections from more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants. The order, issued on Friday, temporarily suspends a lower court ruling that had blocked the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans.
The decision puts on hold a ruling by US District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco, who found that the administration had acted improperly in ending TPS. The three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson criticising the court's intervention as a 'grave misuse' of its emergency powers.
Trump's administration has sought to withdraw various protections for immigrants, including TPS for 600,000 Venezuelans and 500,000 Haitians. TPS, created by Congress in 1990, prevents deportations to countries affected by natural disasters or conflict and is granted in 18-month increments.
Lawyers for the migrants reported that some have lost jobs and homes, while others have been detained or deported following the Supreme Court's earlier intervention in a similar case in May. The court's unsigned order stated that the same reasoning applied to the current case.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that lower courts had disregarded the Supreme Court's previous orders. Judge Chen had determined that the Department of Homeland Security acted with 'unprecedented haste' to terminate Venezuela's TPS status, a finding upheld by an appellate panel.
