DHS Asks Justices to Halt Order to Restore Migrant Protections

The Trump administration on Friday again asked the US Supreme Court to allow it to suspend renewed protections for Venezuelan immigrants, after a federal judge found the move was unlawful.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was within her authority to rescind Venezuela’s designation under the Temporary Protected Status program, an action that isn’t subject to judicial review under federal law, the US Department of Justice asserted in a stay application to the Supreme Court.

Immigrants from designated countries under the TPS program are able to remain in the US with legal work authorization for up to 18 months when certain conditions prevent them from returning home safely.

DHS in February terminated TPS extensions granted by the Biden administration, which canceled protections for Venezuelans and Haitians.

A federal judge in California on Sept. 5 granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs who sued to challenge the cancellation, finding the action violated federal law. The judge restored protections for roughly 350,000 Venezuelans, which the Supreme Court had allowed DHS to remove in May.

The Ninth Circuit on Wednesday rejected the administration’s bid to stay the lower court’s order pending its appeal, finding the government unlikely to prevail with claims under the Administrative Procedure Act.

The high court’s May order didn’t control the Ninth Circuit’s ruling Wednesday, the panel said, because the litigation has since developed a fuller administrative record that revealed a “barebones process” that followed none of the typical procedures for deciding TPS designations.

‘Flawed Legal Grounds’

But the administration on Friday argued the Supreme Court’s ruling in May does control, because the justices “weighed the same threshold merits arguments and equities and found that the calculus favored a stay.” And the district court “made no new factual findings as to the equities” in its summary judgment ruling, resting “on the same flawed legal grounds” as its preliminary injunction order.

Federal law is also “unambiguous” and precludes judicial review of TPS determinations made by the secretary, the Justice Department said. While the district court framed the plaintiffs’ challenges as collateral to the secretary’s decisions, each is “‘essentially an attack’” on the considerations underlying the secretary’s TPS determinations, the administration said.

The DOJ also asserted it will suffer irreparable harm absent a stay, especially because Noem determined that “even a six-month extension of TPS would harm the United States’ ‘national security’ and ‘public safety.’”

The case is Noem v. Nat’l TPS All., U.S., No. 25A326, stay application filed 9/19/25.