Trump asks Supreme Court to let him deport 300,000 Venezuelans

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration urged the Supreme Court on Friday to withdraw deportation protections that had been extended to some 300,000 Venezuelans living in the United States – and it accused a lower court of engaging in a “needless affront” by ruling otherwise.

The case involves decision earlier this year by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to end a form of humanitarian relief known as temporary protected status for Venezuelan migrants.

But it also raises broader questions about how courts – including the Supreme Court – are wrestling with the pace of emergency appeals that are being driven by Trump’s second term.

The latest short-fuse appeal to the Supreme Court – the second to arrive on Friday – touched on a raw debate that has been taking shape within the judiciary: just how much precedential value a vague Supreme Court order on the emergency docket can command.

The dispute over TPS for Venezuelans has already come up to the Supreme Court this year.

In May, over a dissent from liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court allowed Trump to proceed with withdrawing those protections while the case continued in lower courts. A federal judge in California then entered a new order siding with the Venezuelans who sued over the policy in a more permanent way.

In its emergency appeal Friday to the Supreme Court, the administration accused US District Judge Edward Chen and the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals of taking an “indefensible” position by blocking the administration’s policy once again.

“So long as the district court’s order is in effect, the secretary must permit over 300,000 Venezuelan nationals to remain in the country, notwithstanding her reasoned determination that doing so even temporarily is ‘contrary to the national interest,’” the Trump administration wrote.

The Supreme Court’s initial order in the case provided no reasoning for its ruling. The Trump administration argued that it doesn’t matter.

“Whether those orders span one sentence or many pages, disregarding them – as the lower courts did here – is unacceptable,” the administration said.

A number of lower court judges have voiced uncertainty about how to approach cases when the Supreme Court has provided little to no explanation on its quick-turn docket.

“They’re telling us nothing,” US Circuit Judge James Wynn said of the Supreme Court during a remarkable oral argument earlier this month in a case involving whether the Department of Government Efficiency can access Social Security data.

A central issue in the case is whether Noem had the authority to wipe away the existing TPS designation before it was scheduled to expire.

The Biden administration first granted TPS for Venezuelans in March 2021, citing the increased instability in the country, and expanded it in 2023. Two weeks before Trump took office, the Biden administration renewed protections for an additional 18 months.

The challengers, Venezuelan migrants covered under TPS, contended that Noem’s abrupt reversal of the protections violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which mandates specific procedures for federal agencies when implementing policy changes. They also argued that Noem’s decision was motivated by racial and political bias.

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