The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to end deportation protections for more than 600,000 Venezuelans, the administration’s latest plea for the justices to intervene in President Trump’s sweeping immigration agenda.
The emergency application seeks to lift a San Francisco-based federal district judge’s ruling that halted the administration’s plans as a legal challenge proceeds, with that decision finding the abrupt policy change “smacks of racism.”
“Its order upsets the judgments of the political branches, prohibiting the Executive Branch from enforcing a time-sensitive immigration policy and indefinitely extending an immigration status that Congress intended to be ‘temporary,’” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the application.
Known as Temporary Protected Status (TPS), the program protects from deportation those already in the country who cannot return to their home due to unrest or dangerous conditions.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “vacated” a renewal of TPS for Venezuelans shortly after taking office in January, saying she was not going to let the prior administration “tie our hands.” Noem announced the move in an interview in which she repeatedly referred to migrants as “dirtbags.”
A storied US agency, one that began under President Kennedy in 1961 with the aim of...
