Court of Appeals Halts stripping of TPS from Venezuelans

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (Kim McLane Wardlaw, Salvador Mendoza, Jr., and Anthony D. Johnstone, Circuit Judges. Opinion by Judge Wardlaw; Concurrence by Judge Mendoza) has ruled that the Trump administration’s decision to strip Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from 600,000 Venezuelans was unlawful.   In a 48-page ruling, the three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit concluded that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s “actions fundamentally contradict Congress’s statutory design, and her assertion of a raw, unchecked power to vacate a country’s TPS is irreconcilable with the plain language of the statute.” The court affirmed the district court decision setting aside the Secretary’s unlawful action decision as illegal because it was an attempt “to exercise powers Congress simply did not provide under the statute.”  

In a powerful concurrence, Judge Mendoza explained he would also have found the administration’s decision unlawful because it was motivated by racial animus against Venezuelans. His decision recounts the history of racist statements by Secretary Noem and President Trump against the Venezuelan population in particular.       

The Ninth Circuit’s ruling comes as other federal courts have rejected the administration's explanation for revoking the extension of TPS for Venezuelans, which is not set to expire until October 2026.This latest ruling rejects the government’s appeal of the district court's September 5 final ruling that the cancellation of TPS for Venezuelans and Haitians was illegal and must be set aside. On October 3, in an unexplained two-paragraph decision on its shadow docket, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the district court’s ruling and gave the Trump administration free rein to strip people of their rights and place them at immediate risk of detention and deportation by terminating TPS for Venezuelans while the appeal proceeded.   

Ahilan Arulanantham, Faculty Co-Director at the UCLA Center for Immigration Law & Policy (CILP), who argued the case on behalf of the plaintiffs, said, “Despite this powerful ruling, the government will no doubt continue illegally detaining and deporting Venezuelan TPS holders because of the unexplained two-paragraph Supreme Court order that stayed the lower court ruling here. Because of the Supreme Court’s earlier action, today's decision does not immediately change anything on the ground. There is no clearer example of the Supreme Court’s lawless behavior than what it has enabled in this case.”   

“Despite the Ninth Circuit affirming--again--that Secretary Noem violated the law when she revoked TPS for 600,000 Venezuelans, TPS holders still face detention and deportation because a Supreme Court shadow docket order lets the revocation take effect anyway. The extent of lawlessness in our immigration system right now is truly difficult to comprehend,” said Jessica Bansal, TPS counsel at the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.  
 

Read the ruling HERE