President Donald Trump and Secretary Kristi Noem (Getty)
Migrants fleeing Venezuela – effectively a dictatorship since the late Hugo Chávez’s 1999 election – were granted special protection by former President Joe Biden in 2021 due to humanitarian concerns.
Biden then extended TPS in 2023, qualifying about 350,000 more Venezuelan migrants to arrive after the original timeframe imposed.
After Trump took office, Noem revoked the 2023 TPS extension, which set the ball rolling on the eventual cancellation of protected status for Venezuelan migrants.
In April, Obama-appointed Judge Edward Milton Chen issued an injunction blocking Noem’s move to end TPS. The Supreme Court overruled Chen in a brief, unsigned order in May, allowing Noem’s timeline to resume.
While unsigned, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted her dissent.
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But Chen then followed up in June with a narrow ruling noting that preexisting work permits and the like should not be canceled retroactively.
A three-judge Ninth Circuit panel in Pasadena, California, last heard arguments during a July appeal by the Trump administration during which one judge reportedly called the president's comments "arguably racist."
In comments to Fox News Digital, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the lawsuit is "a desperate attempt to keep half a million poorly vetted illegal aliens in this country and undermine President Trump’s constitutional authority to enforce America’s immigration laws."
"The Biden administration abused its parole authority to create an industrial-scale catch-and-release scheme, and the Trump administration is correcting that," she added.
"This lawsuit is an insult to the tens of millions of Americans who gave this president a mandate to restore safety and common sense to our immigration system."
Charles Creitz is a reporter for Fox News Digital.
He joined Fox News in 2013 as a writer and production assistant.
Charles covers media, politics and culture for Fox News Digital.
Charles is a Pennsylvania native and graduated from Temple University with a B.A. in Broadcast Journalism. Story tips can be sent to charles.creitz@fox.com.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/venezuelan-migrants-progressive-group-sue-dhs-cbp-after-noem-nixes-biden-era-protected-status