Different cases raise different issues and therefore may have different outcomes in the courts. This is blindingly obvious, and yet reporters frequently treat legal proceedings as though they were entirely political, and praise or condemn court rulings accordingly.
The Supreme Court’s two most recent orders in immigration cases illustrate the point. I am going to address them in two separate posts.
Yesterday, the Court issued an unsigned order that granted the Trump administration’s motion for an emergency stay in a case involving Venezuelans who were granted Temporary Protected Status by the Biden administration. The Biden administration had granted that status to more than 300,000 Venezuelans, and the Trump administration revoked Biden’s action.
The history is set forth by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services:
The Administration is committed to restoring the rule of law with respect to TPS. On Feb. 3, 2025, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s vacatur of the Jan. 17, 2025 notice that extended a Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for Venezuela was published in the Federal Register.
So the Biden administration extended TPS for this group of Venezuelans three days before Trump took office. The Trump administration is now reversing that action.
On Feb. 5, 2025, the Secretary’s decision to terminate TPS under the 2023 designation for Venezuela was published. On March 31, 2025, Judge Edward Chen, a federal judge in San Francisco, ordered the department to continue TPS for Venezuelans. See National TPS Alliance, et al., v. Kristi Noem et al., No. 3:25-cv-01766 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 31, 2025). The court did so even though the TPS statute says that TPS decisions are not subject to judicial review. … DHS has every intention of ending Venezuela TPS under the 2023 designation as soon as it obtains relief from the court order.
The Supreme Court’s action yesterday stayed Judge Chen’s order of March 31, so that deportations can go forward as the lawsuit proceeds.
The statute relating to Temporary Protected Status is 8 USC 1254a. Of course, TPS status is just that–temporary. It isn’t intended to last forever. The statute includes a procedure whereby the Attorney General can terminate the TPS designation, as the Trump administration has now done. And the statute specifically provides, as USCIS noted, that “There is no judicial review of any determination of the Attorney General with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state under this subsection.” So what could Judge Chen, an Obama appointee, possibly have been thinking?
NBC News explains:
California-based U.S. District Judge Edward Chen blocked the move, citing concerns that the decision was based in part on racial animus.
This is the familiar theory that the Trump administration’s action was perfectly legal, but for the fact that it was Trump who did it. Watch for Chen to be reversed, and for deportations to continue in the meantime. And pay no attention to news outlets like
