By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) -A federal judge prevented the Trump administration from invalidating work permits and other documents granting lawful status to about 5,000 Venezuelans, a subset of the nearly 350,000 whose temporary legal protections the U.S. Supreme Court last week allowed to be terminated.
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco in a Friday night ruling concluded that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem likely exceeded her authority when she in February invalidated those documents while more broadly ending the temporary protected status granted to the Venezuelans.
The U.S. Supreme Court on May 19 lifted an earlier order Chen issued that prevented the administration as part of President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration agenda from terminating deportation protection conferred to Venezuelans under the Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, program.
But the high court stated specifically it was not preventing any Venezuelans from still challenging Noem’s related decision to invalidate documents they were issued pursuant to that program that allowed them to work and live in the United States.
Such documents were issued after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in the final days of Democratic President Joe Biden’s tenure extended the TPS program for the Venezuelans by 18 months to October 2026, an action Noem then moved to reverse.
TPS is available to people whose home country has experienced a natural disaster, armed conflict or other extraordinary event.
Lawyers for several Venezuelans and the advocacy group National TPS Alliance asked Chen to recognize the continuing validity of those documents, saying without them thousands of migrants could lose their jobs or be deported.
Chen in siding with them said nothing in the statute that authorized the Temporary Protected Status program allowed Noem to invalidate the documents.
Chen, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, noted the administration estimated only about 5,000 of the 350,000 Venezuelans held such documents.
“This smaller number cuts against any contention that the continued presence of these TPS holders who were granted TPS-related documents by the Secretary would be a toll on the national or local economies or a threat to national security,” Chen wrote.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
Chen ruled hours after the U.S. Supreme Court in a different case allowed Trump’s administration to end the temporary immigration “parole” granted to 532,000 Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants under a different Biden-era program.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
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