Trump-Targeted Venezuelan Migrants Can Work After Legal Win (1)

US businesses can keep thousands of Venezuelan workers on the job for now as litigation proceeds over the Trump administration’s efforts to remove temporary deportation protections, immigration attorneys and advocates say.

Some 350,000 Venezuelans with Temporary Protected Status faced loss of protections as soon as this week before a court order blocked their termination. Plaintiffs said many had already gotten notifications from employers that they’d be out of a job because of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s termination of TPS protections in February.

Terminating TPS relief, which President Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail last year, would boost his mass deportation agenda by making hundreds of thousands of immigrants newly unauthorized. Immigration advocates say it would also wipe out billions in economic contributions from TPS holders and exacerbate labor shortages in many sectors.

Attorneys say a California federal judge’s March 31 order postponing the TPS cancellation means Venezuelan TPS holders should retain work authorization for their roles in food service, home healthcare, education, and other industries.

The Department of Homeland Security indicated it plans to appeal the judge’s order, but noted in an alert on its website Wednesday that a January Biden administration extension of protections is now in effect.

“There’s no doubt the unlawful cancellation is causing confusion among employers,” said Cathryn Paul, public policy director at Casa, an immigrant advocacy organization that’s filed its own TPS suit in the District of Maryland.

Status Quo

About 600,000 Venezuelans were eligible for TPS protection through 2026 after the Biden administration issued an extension in January. That move included two groups of immigrants covered by TPS designations for Venezuela in 2021 and 2023.

Noem canceled that extension, saying she wouldn’t follow through on a move “to tie our hands,” and later terminated protections entirely. That would expose immigrants covered by the 2023 designation to deportation after April 7.

Judge Edward Chen’s order in the Northern District of California postponing TPS terminations returns Venezuelans to the status quo before those actions by the Trump administration, attorneys say.

“It basically puts people back to January 20,” said Dawn Lurie, co-chair of the immigration compliance and enforcement practice at Seyfarth Shaw LLP.

It’s unclear for many employers which Venezuelan workers may be covered by the 2021 TPS designation, which expires in September, or the 2023 designation that was set to expire this week, said LJ D’Arrigo, a partner and leader of the immigration practice at Harris Beach Murtha.

For the latter group, Chen’s order raised questions for employers about whether work authorization continues or just removal protections.

Restoring the Biden extension should mean that Venezuelans get both benefits through the beginning of April 2026, D’Arrigo said. For employment verification purposes until then, businesses would only need an expired work permit and the Jan. 17 Federal Register notice of the extension.

But to receive an 18-month extension offered under that notice, they’d need to file applications to renew TPS and work permit benefits, which were blocked by Noem’s cancellation of extensions.

Employers, DMV offices, and state and local governments can rely on Chen’s order to show that TPS holders remain work eligible, University of California Los Angeles law professor Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney for plaintiffs in the Northern District of California, told reporters this week.

“They’re really obligated to take this decision as sufficient proof that Venezuelan TPS holders are eligible to work and live in this country,” he said. “The way this decision will be implemented is by lots of government actors at various levels all over the country.”

Worker Impact

The Trump administration on April 1 requested a stay of Chen’s ruling or an order narrowing it to cover only the National TPS Alliance and individual plaintiffs who filed the Northern District of California lawsuit.

Tricia McLaughlin, Homeland Security assistant secretary of public affairs, said in a statement that Chen’s order “is yet another example of an activist judge trying to obstruct President Trump’s agenda.”

“Secretary Noem will continue fighting to return integrity to the TPS system, which has been abused and exploited by illegal aliens for decades. We will return TPS to its original status: temporary,” McLaughlin said.

Chen’s order means workers employed across all sectors of the economy can stay in their jobs, said Manny Pastreich, president of 32BJ SEIU, which brought a separate challenge to TPS terminations for Haitians in the Eastern District of New York.

“They’re the essential workers who clean buildings and schools, security officers who keep our buildings and transportation hubs safe, and airport workers who keep our airports clean and safe,” Pastreich said in a statement. “Uprooting these workers from our communities and workplaces would negatively impact our local economies and devastate entire families.”

But tracking evolving litigation on a daily basis will test businesses, said John Mazzeo, senior director and associate general counsel at Vertical Screen Inc.

“The herky jerky of implementation is going to be hard on employers,” he said. “As an employer, you’re still stuck in this no man’s land, not knowing how much of your workforce is going to be able to show up tomorrow.”