Chicago – May 19, 2025
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to move forward with plans to end legal protections for about 350,000 Venezuelans living in the United States. These protections were provided under a program called Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which shields people from deportation.
The court’s decision means the Trump administration can end TPS for these Venezuelans while they wait for the case to be fully reviewed. This could lead to possible deportations soon. A federal judge had previously stopped the administration’s plan to end TPS just before it was set to expire on April 7, which led the Trump administration to ask the Supreme Court to step in.
Tricia McLaughlin, an official with the Department of Homeland Security, called the ruling “a win for the American people and the safety of our communities.”
The Supreme Court didn’t explain why it made this decision, but they did say that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson disagreed with the ruling.
The decision affects the group of Venezuelans who received TPS in 2023, meaning they may have lost their status and work permits. It does not impact the 250,000 Venezuelans who were granted TPS in 2021, but lawyers believe this decision could be a bad sign for them too.
The Venezuelan community in the U.S. is divided into two groups: those who received TPS in 2021 under the Biden administration and those who received it in 2023. The court’s decision only applies to the 2023 group. As for the 2021 group, their protection is expected to end later this year when the Trump administration plans to let the program expire.
