Judge Says Trump Admin Must Keep Biden-Era Program Shielding Venezuelans From Deportation

A federal judge in San Francisco moved to postpone the Trump administration from ending a Biden-era program that shielded hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants from deportation. 

U.S. Senior District Judge Edward Chen ordered the Department of Homeland Security to postpone revoking temporary protected status (TPS) for 348,202 Venezuelans living in the United States who were given work authorization and shielded from deportation by the Biden administration in October 2023. Chen said the revocation would cause “irreparable harm” and hurt the economy. 

The decision comes after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that she was revoking the TPS status, saying that conditions had improved in Venezuela and that it was not in America’s best interest to maintain the program. In response, a group called the National TPS Alliance sued to block Noem’s decision. 

Chen sided with the National TPS Alliance in his order and said that Noem’s decision was not backed by evidence, including allegations of gang affiliations. Noem had said there was an increased presence of Venezuelan gang members connected to Tren de Aragua.

Chen said that this argument was “baseless and smacks of racism predicated on generalized false stereotypes.”

“The Secretary’s rationale is entirely lacking in evidentiary support,” Chen said in his ruling. “For example, there is no evidence that Venezuelan TPS holders are members of the TdA gang, have connections to the gang, and/or commit crimes.”

The Obama-appointed judge also claimed that TPS recipients were more educated, more involved in the workforce, and less likely to commit crimes than American citizens. 

Chen said that the TPS recipients “have higher education attainment than most U.S. citizens (40-54% have bachelor degrees), have high labor participation rates (80-96%), earn nearly all their personal income (96%), and annually contribute billions of dollars to the U.S. economy and pay hundreds of millions, if not billions, in social security taxes. They also have lower rates of criminality than the general U.S. population.”

In response to Chen’s decision, Trump border czar Tom Homan said that TPS status was meant to be temporary, not a “decades-long” program. Homan said the ruling was based on an “activist judge’s” opinion. 

“President Trump is going to do his job by rule of law. The law says temporary status,” Homan told Fox News. “Once the conditions change, then people should be removed from the United States. It’s only a temporary status.”