Several Venezuelans along with three immigrant rights groups have filed lawsuits against President Donald Trump's administration for terminating temporary protections from deportation for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants residing in the United States.
One of the federal lawsuits was lodged in San Francisco by the National TPS Alliance and seven Venezuelans living in the U.S., while another was filed in Greenbelt, Maryland, by rights groups CASA and Make the Road New York.
Both legal actions contest the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's decision to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for approximately 348,000 Venezuelan immigrants, comprising over half of all Venezuelans covered by the program. This decision puts them at risk of deportation and losing work permits in April, with the remaining 600,000 Venezuelans in the program facing potential loss of legal status and benefits in September.
Temporary Protected Status is granted to individuals from countries affected by natural disasters, armed conflicts, or other exceptional events.
The termination of TPS for Venezuelans is part of the current administration's wider immigration agenda aiming to tighten regulations on humanitarian programs that, according to President Trump, exceed the scope of U.S. law.
The Department of Homeland Security has not commented on the lawsuits. Meanwhile, in 2021, the Biden administration extended TPS to Venezuelans due to high levels of crime in Venezuela linked to political and economic turmoil under President Nicolas Maduro.
The lawsuits claim that U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her department lacked the legal authority to reverse a decision by President Biden granting an 18-month extension of temporary protections for Venezuelans. They argue that the department's actions deviated arbitrarily from standard practices and wrongly assumed that Venezuelans with TPS were residing in the U.S. unlawfully.
The National TPS Alliance lawsuit highlights statements by Noem, Trump, and others, accusing them of incorrectly stating that Venezuelans with TPS were living in the country illegally.
Both lawsuits suggest that Noem's decision was influenced, at least in part, by what they describe as unconstitutional "racial animus," referring to Noem's interview on Fox News where she referred to Venezuelans with protected status as "dirtbags."