Supreme Court Again Allows TPS Termination for Venezuelans

The Supreme Court on Friday issued a brief unsigned emergency order, for a second time allowing the administration to pause and proceed with terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelan migrants, saying “the same result that we reached in May is appropriate here.” The order is temporary and remains in effect while appeals continue, leaving hundreds of thousands of TPS holders at risk. Lower courts—including U.S. District Judge Edward Chen and a Ninth Circuit panel—had found Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s termination unlawful, citing procedural defects and discriminatory statements and warning revocation would expose beneficiaries to detention, job loss and deportation. Reports place the number of Venezuelan TPS beneficiaries between roughly 300,000 and 600,000, and advocates say the ruling has already created immediate uncertainty with some beneficiaries detained or losing work. The court's three liberal justices dissented, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a solo dissent calling repeated emergency interventions a “grave misuse” of the emergency docket.