Judge Restores Venezuelan Migrants’ Deportation Protections (1)

A San Francisco federal judge dealt a new blow to the Trump administration’s legal defense for dismantling temporary immigration protections, finding its cancellation of a deportation shield for Venezuelan and Haitian migrants unlawful.

Judge Edward M. Chen of the Northern District of California on Friday restored Temporary Protected Status for some 350,000 Venezuelans and preserved the legal status for another quarter million immigrants from the country set to lose it later this year.

The Trump administration made wiping out TPS a signature part of its immigration agenda and has faced multiple legal challenges over the terminations.

Protections and employment authorization for Venezuelans are back in place until October 2026. But they’ll have to re-register for TPS by Sept. 10.

A New York federal court had already blocked the Department of Homeland Security from pulling TPS protections from Haitians, restoring their status until at least February 2026. Chen’s order offers further insurance to those immigrants.

In California, plaintiffs led by the National TPS Alliance challenged DHS moves to vacate extensions granted by the Biden administration and subsequently terminate protections for Venezuela and Haiti. Their lawsuit argued
the agency violated procedural requirements by nixing the extensions, and claimed violations of equal protection rights because Trump officials were motivated by racial animus.

Chen, an Obama appointee, found that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem acted with “unprecedented haste and in an unprecedented manner” to issue a preordained decision to vacate protections for Venezuelans.

“DHS began drafting the decision to vacate within days after President Trump began his second administration,” he found. “There is no indication that the Secretary or DHS consulted any other government agencies or conducted an internal evaluation as part of this process.”

Temporary Protected Status allows immigrants who can’t safely return to their home countries to stay in the US and get work eligibility for up to 18 months. DHS is required by statute to conduct an objective review in coordination with other agencies of conditions in a given country at least 60 days before protections expire to decide whether they should be renewed or not.

Chen in March found that canceling TPS for Venezuelans under a 2023 designation was likely unlawful, issuing an order preserving the protections. An appellate panel affirmed last week that DHS likely violated the APA.

But the US Supreme Court in May granted the Trump administration’s emergency request to strip protections while litigation moved forward. While that high court order applied to Chen’s preliminary stay on the terminations, his latest order granted summary judgment to plaintiffs.

Some Venezuelan TPS holders as a result of the Supreme Court decision have already been detained and deported by the government, said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law and counsel for plaintiffs.

“It was such an obviously bad faith, bogus decision-making process that the administration tried to perpetrate here,” he said in an interview.

A DHS spokesperson said Noem “will use every legal option at the Department’s disposal to end” the TPS designations.

National TPS Alliance is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, and University of Los Angeles School of Law’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy. DHS is represented by the Department of Justice.

The case is Nat’l TPS All. v. Noem, N.D. Cal., No. 3:25-cv-01766, summary judgment granted 9/5/25.