Chalk up a Supreme Court victory for Trump on Venezuelan Migrants. But legal issues remain.
The Wall Street Journal reports Supreme Court Allows Trump to Strip Legal Status From Venezuelan Migrants
The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to strip temporary legal protections from thousands of Venezuelans living in the U.S. for now, in a win for its mass deportation efforts.
The high court on Monday paused a lower-court order that blocked the Department of Homeland Security from removing those protections while litigation proceeds.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in February announced she was rescinding temporary legal protections that allowed certain Venezuelan migrants to live and work in the U.S.
A federal court in California ordered the agency to postpone ending those protections while it evaluates a challenge to the legality of the move. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals previously declined to overturn the lower court order, and set a hearing for July.
The Supreme Court’s short, unsigned order on Monday noted legal questions remain on whether the migrants who lost their protected status would still be authorized to work in the U.S.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only noted dissent.
Congress established the Temporary Protected Status program in the Immigration Act of 1990. It allows officials to grant temporary legal immigration status to migrants from disaster- or war-stricken countries for up to 18 months at a time. Under the program, immigrants can get work permits and other documentation to live in the U.S.
Stripping the protection would mean nearly 350,000 people would immediately lose the right to live and work in the U.S., according to the group of migrants that brought the challenge.
In a brief seeking the high court’s intervention, Solicitor General John Sauer said that Congress gave DHS broad authority to designate unsafe countries and to manage the TPS program.
Winning the Case the Right Way
Trump did not ignore the lower court rule.
Instead, Trump appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court and won.
I am still puzzled by this: The Supreme Court’s short, unsigned order on Monday noted legal questions remain on whether the migrants who lost their protected status would still be authorized to work in the U.S.
Something seems wrong.
If Congress gave DHS broad authority to designate unsafe countries, what legal question remains?
And if DHS has broad authority, then why can’t it claim every country is unsafe. There is a conflict here.
The New York Times has a better writeup.
Please consider Supreme Court Lets Trump Lift Deportation Protections for Venezuelans
The Supreme Court on Monday let the Trump administration, for now, remove protections from nearly 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants who had been allowed to remain in the United States without risk of deportation under a program known as Temporary Protected Status.
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 Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that she would have denied the administration’s request.
The justices announced they would allow the Trump administration to end the protections pending appeal of the case, potentially allowing the administration to move ahead with deportations. The justices also clarified, however, that they would preserve the ability of individual immigrants to bring legal challenges in some instances, including if the government tried to cancel their work permits.
In a separate case, the justices on Friday criticized the Trump administration for seeking to provide only a day’s warning to a different group of Venezuelan immigrants in Texas it had been trying to deport under the expansive powers of the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime law. The Trump administration has accused that group of migrants of being members of the violent gang Tren de Aragua.
The Temporary Protected Status program, enacted by Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, allows migrants from nations that have experienced national disasters, armed conflicts or other extraordinary instabilities to live and work legally in the United States.
Anyone impacted by this ruling with a work permit will bring a legal challenge.
How much time will they be given? Who decides? On what basis?
Supreme Court Rules 7-2 Against Trump on Alien Enemies Case
On May 16, I noted Supreme Court Rules 7-2 Against Trump on Alien Enemies Case
The Supreme Court gave Trump a much-deserved smack in the face today.
The Supreme Court bought some time for itself, but the interim looks like a mess.