A federal appeals court on Friday reaffirmed temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants the Trump administration wanted to immediately deport, rejecting an emergency request from the White House.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco declined to reverse a lower-court judge’s ruling on March 31 that blocked efforts by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, to terminate the protections for Venezuelans known as Temporary Protected Status.
A three-judge panel said the government had not demonstrated it would “suffer irreparable harm” should that ruling stand.
The case is one of several challenging the moves by the Trump administration to end deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of people from two countries, Venezuela and Haiti.
Venezuelans have made up the largest group of T.P.S. holders in the United States — now as many as 700,000 people — as repression and economic devastation under Venezuela’s autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro, have prompted millions of people to flee the nation in recent years.
The court decision on Friday preserved the T.P.S. status of about 350,000 people who lost their deportation protections on April 7. Hundreds of thousands of more people were expected to lose the status later this year.
Lawyers representing Venezuelan T.P.S. holders and the National TPS Alliance, an immigrant advocacy organization, have asked the courts to keep Ms. Noem’s actions from going into effect while they challenge the Trump administration’s attempts to revoke the form of legal status.
They argue that the secretary has violated administrative procedures and acted with racial bias in attempting to revoke extensions of the protections, which were offered to migrants under the Biden administration.
Lawyers from the Justice Department, which is representing Ms. Noem and her agency, argued that Trump administration officials have acted solely on the basis of national security and concern for public safety. They contended that the lower court ruling intruded on Ms. Noem’s authority to make agency decisions.
The Temporary Protected Status program, passed by Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, allows people from certain troubled nations like Haiti and Ukraine to live and work legally in the country.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond on Friday to a request for comment on the case.
Lawyers and immigrant rights advocates on Friday said that the preservation of the T.P.S. program for Venezuelan families was critical at a time when the Trump administration sought to aggressively expand deportations.
“This decision reaffirms what our communities have always known — that our lives are not bargaining chips and our presence here is rooted in justice,” said Jose Palma, the coordinator for the National TPS Alliance.
