New order by California judge protects some Venezuelan TPS holders from deportation

Verónica Egui Brito, Miami Herald on May 31, 2025

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MIAMI — A federal judge has granted protection from deportation and work permits to as many as 5,000 Venezuelans who have Temporary Protected Status.

U.S. District Judge Edward E. Chen in San Francisco on Friday granted an emergency motion filed by Venezuelan plaintiffs following last week’s Supreme Court ruling that the Trump administration can deport some Venezuelans on TPS while a challenge wends its way through the courts.

Chen’s order involves two key dates: Jan. 17, 2025, when Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security at the time, extended TPS for Venezuelans until next year, and Feb. 5, when the new DHS secretary, Kristi Noem, announced she was revoking the extension.

In an 11-page ruling, Chen ordered the government to uphold the rights of TPS holders who received government documentation — such as work permits and/or TPS renewals — under Mayorkas’s extension between those two dates.

“If DHS granted that extension, it must honor it and comply with the court’s order,” said Emi MacLean, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who is among the lawyers representing the Venezuelans in the case.

During Thursday’s hearing, the government estimated that about 5,000 Venezuelans re-registered for TPS or work permits, a figure Chen referred to in his ruling.

“What we do know is that two of the named plaintiffs in our case do benefit from the order,” MacLean said. “We also have named plaintiffs who fall outside the scope of Judge Chen’s ruling—for example, those who received an automatic extension but only after February 5th. Additionally, we know there are people who made the effort to re-register but didn’t receive any official notice in time to benefit from it.”

The plaintiffs are represented by the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

Noem revoked TPS protections for roughly 350,000 Venezuelans effective April 7 — stripping their right to work and exposing them to potential detention and deportation. Many affected individuals live in South Florida. After the Supreme Court ruling, Homeland Security updated its TPS guidance but has yet to clarify how it will implement the decision.

On March 31, Chen blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to revoke deportation protections for Venezuelans just days before their legal status was set to expire. Chen ruled that Venezuelan nationals with TPS could suffer “irreparable injury” without a stay on their deportations.

In April, a federal appeals court upheld Chen’s stay, rejecting the government’s request to lift it. However, on May 19 the Supreme Court issued a ruling favoring the Trump administration by allowing the termination of TPS to proceed while the case is litigated.

The Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the lawsuit, which was filed by seven Venezuelans and the National TPS Alliance in federal court in San Francisco. The high court clarified that its order does not prevent ongoing challenges to Noem’s decision to cancel work permits and other official documents set to expire on Oct. 2, 2026.