By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) – A group of Venezuelans filed a U.S. lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s decision to end temporary protections against deportation for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Venezuela living in the United States.
The lawsuit was filed on Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco by the National TPS Alliance, a group that advocates for immigrants who have been granted temporary protected status, and by seven Venezuelans living in the U.S.
The lawsuit challenged the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s February 3 decision to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for about 348,000 Venezuelan immigrants, more than half of all Venezuelans in the program.
The decision means they could face deportation and the loss of work permits in April. The rest of the roughly 600,000 Venezuelans in the program could lose the legal status and associated benefits in September.
TPS is available to people whose home country has experienced a natural disaster, armed conflict or other extraordinary event.
The move to end TPS for Venezuelans was part of Republican President Donald Trump’s broader campaign to crack down on immigration and humanitarian programs he says go beyond the intent of U.S. law.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Former President Joe Biden’s administration first granted TPS to Venezuelans in 2021, citing high levels of crime in Venezuela related to political and economic instability under President Nicolas Maduro.
The lawsuit alleges that U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her department lacked legal authority to vacate a decision by Biden weeks earlier to grant an 18-month extension of temporary protections for Venezuelans.
Even if the department did have legal authority to rapidly withdraw such protections, it arbitrarily deviated from past practice while doing so and wrongly assumed that Venezuelans with TPS were in the country illegally, the suit alleges.
The lawsuit cited statements by Noem, Trump and other members of the administration who the plaintiffs said had incorrectly claimed Venezuelans were residing in the country illegally.
The lawsuit alleged the Noem’s decision was at least partially motivated by what it called unconstitutional “racial animus.” It pointed to an interview Noem gave Fox News announcing her decision in which she labeled Venezuelans granted protected status as “dirtbags.”
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; additional reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Howard Goller)
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