Supreme Court Sides with President Trump in Landmark Immigration Ruling
In a pivotal decision late Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court handed President Donald J. Trump a major legal victory, allowing his administration to move forward with ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants — a program critics say had long been abused as a backdoor to permanent residency.
The Court’s brief emergency order reversed a lower-court ruling that had blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to terminate TPS, paving the way for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to begin enforcing deportations and end work authorizations for Venezuelans who no longer qualify under the program.
According to Newsweek, the decision effectively pauses a federal judge’s injunction and reinstates Trump’s policy immediately. The President has repeatedly argued that TPS was never meant to become a “permanent protection” but rather a temporary humanitarian tool, which prior administrations had stretched beyond its lawful intent.
“We cannot allow short-term emergency programs to become long-term loopholes,” Trump said earlier this year, emphasizing that immigration policy “must serve American workers and uphold the rule of law.”
Created by Congress in 1990, the TPS program was designed to offer short-term refuge to foreign nationals fleeing wars, natural disasters, or extraordinary crises. But under the Biden administration, its scope expanded dramatically — extending to nations like Venezuela and Haiti, even as conditions in some of those countries had begun to stabilize.
Immigration advocates warned that the ruling could have ripple effects across other TPS-designated groups, such as Haitians, Hondurans, and Salvadorans. “This ruling jeopardizes not just Venezuelan families, but the integrity of humanitarian protections altogether,” said Jorge Lowery of the National TPS Alliance. “We’re bracing for mass disruption in immigrant communities across the country.”
A lower-court judge, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen, had previously accused DHS of acting “with unprecedented haste,” while an appellate panel claimed the administration “made its decisions first and searched for a valid basis for those decisions second.” The Supreme Court’s decision halts those rulings and authorizes DHS to carry out the TPS termination immediately.
The order drew the familiar ideological split among the justices. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, issued a pointed dissent, accusing the Court of abusing its emergency docket.
“This Court should have stayed its hand,” Jackson wrote. “The Court plainly misjudges the irreparable harm and balance-of-the-equities factors by privileging the bald assertion of unconstrained executive power over countless families’ pleas for the stability our Government has promised them.”
“Because, respectfully, I cannot abide our repeated, gratuitous, and harmful interference with cases pending in the lower courts while lives hang in the balance, I dissent,” she added.
The decision applies specifically to Venezuelans and does not include Haitian nationals involved in related litigation. For Venezuelans whose TPS protections have expired, DHS may now proceed with removal proceedings.
Some immigration attorneys say confusion is likely in the coming weeks. “People don’t know whether to pack up their lives, whether their work permits are still valid, or whether ICE could come knocking next week,” said Teresa Amaya, an immigration lawyer based in Portland.
President Trump has framed the Court’s ruling as a restoration of executive authority and immigration integrity, part of his broader effort to undo what he calls “open-border policies” and reinstate order at the southern border.
While immigrant advocacy groups vow to continue legal challenges, the Supreme Court’s ruling signals a decisive shift in immigration enforcement under Trump’s second term — one that reaffirms his commitment to the rule of law, border security, and American sovereignty.