The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to step in and allow Homeland Security to shut down a Biden-era deportation amnesty that’s protecting hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans from deportation, saying lower courts have trampled on President Trump’s powers.
The case is the latest immigration challenge to reach the high court, as Mr. Trump seeks backing for his aggressive attempt to rid the country of many of the illegal immigrants who arrived during the Biden years.
At issue is what’s known as Temporary Protected Status, a tentative legal status an administration can grant to citizens of countries that are facing natural disasters, war or other instability.
The Biden administration’s Homeland Security Department granted TPS in unprecedented fashion, including to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who lacked firm legal status here. Late in the Biden era, then-Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, acting well before the deadline, renewed TPS for Venezuelans, attempting to lock it in for at least 18 more months.
New Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem reversed that early renewal decision and then revoked the TPS grant itself for at least some Venezuelans.
A federal district judge ruled that she acted with “racial animus” toward Venezuelans and overturned her decision.
Now the administration has asked the justices to stay that lower court ruling, which would clear the way to end TPS.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer called the judge’s finding of animus a “pastiche of out-of-context ‘evidence’” and said Ms. Noem issued a well-reasoned decision under the law that allowing the Venezuelans to stay was against the national interest.
He said the lower court substituted its own judgment for that of the executive branch.
“That is a classic case of judicial arrogation of core Executive Branch prerogatives and alone warrants correction,” Mr. Sauer said.
The theory behind TPS is that those countries need space to recover and their citizens shouldn’t be sent back to tough times.
But in practice, it has often become a permanent, separate class of immigrant. Some Central American migrants have been living here under TPS designations that date back to the turn of the century.
The Biden administration vastly expanded TPS’s use, going from about 300,000 people protected in early 2021 to nearly 1.1 million people as of December.
