Biden issued parole orders for illegal aliens under the "Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans" action in Jan. 2023.
The court’s brief order was unsigned and gave no reasons, which is typical when the justices rule on emergency applications. No vote count was listed, although according to reporting by the New York Times Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that she would have denied the administration’s request.
This case started in February, when Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, terminated an 18-month extension of Temporary Protected Status that had been granted to Venezuelans by the Biden administration. People affected by the change sued, saying that the move violated administrative procedures and was influenced by racial bias, reported the New York Times.
In March, Judge Edward M. Chen of the Federal District Court in San Francisco blocked the administration’s efforts to remove the protections while the case moved forward. He said the plaintiffs had demonstrated that they were likely to succeed in showing that Ms. Noem’s actions had been “unauthorized by law, arbitrary and capricious, and motivated by unconstitutional animus.”
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the Supreme Court in a brief on May 1 that the judge in California had overstepped his authority.
“The court contravened an express bar on judicial review, sidestepped black-letter law authorizing agencies to reverse as-yet-inoperative actions, and embraced a baseless equal-protection theory on the road to issuing impermissible universal relief that intrudes on central Executive Branch operations,” Sauer said, according to reporting by The Epoch Times.
He added that the order “upsets the judgments of the political branches, prohibiting the executive branch from enforcing a time-sensitive immigration policy and indefinitely extending an immigration status that Congress intended to be” temporary.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had rejected the administration’s request for a stay pending appeal.
The matter stems from a suit filed by the National Temporary Protected Status Alliance against Noem.
The Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program was created by an act of Congress in 1990 and allows the Department of Homeland Security secretary to prevent deportation—and create a path to citizenship— for qualifying illegal immigrants who cannot return home safely.
Beginning in March 2021, then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas awarded Venezuela TPS designation because it was “facing a severe humanitarian emergency,” marked by political conflict, food and medicine shortages, and “deepening poverty.”
The protected status for each branch of the program was renewed several times, in 18-month blocks. The latest extension was granted on January 17, just before Trump assumed office, and was set to expire in 2026.
- Supreme Court
- Trump immigration policy
- deportations
- Venezuelan immigrants
- Temporary Protected Status
- Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans,
- Kristi Noem
- Department of Homeland Security
- Tom Homan
- Judge Edward M. Chen
- U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer
