The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to override a lower court ruling and let it move forward with ending protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan nationals in the U.S.
The government is asking the high court to block, for now, a March ruling from U.S. District Judge Edward Chen that delayed President Donald Trump's plans to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) protections for some 350,000 Venezuelan nationals living in the U.S. Those protections would have otherwise expired in April.
U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer asked justices on Thursday to allow the administration to proceed, accusing Chen of improperly intruding on the executive branch's authority over immigration policy.
"The district court's reasoning is untenable," Sauer told the high court, adding that the program "implicates particularly discretionary, sensitive, and foreign-policy-laden judgments of the Executive Branch regarding immigration policy."
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"The decision to delay the Secretary's actions effectively nullifies them, tying them up in the very judicial second-guessing that Congress prohibited," he said of the lower court order. "The district court's ill-considered preliminary injunction should be stayed."
At issue is the TPS program, which allows individuals to live and work in the U.S. legally if they cannot work safely in their home country due to a disaster, armed conflict or other "extraordinary and temporary conditions."
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem terminated the program for Venezuelan nationals on Feb. 1, prompting the emergency lawsuit and Chen's order that postponed it from taking force.
The lower court judge sided with plaintiffs from the National TPS Alliance in ruling that the termination of the TPS program, which is extended in 18-month increments, is "unprecedented," and suggested that the abrupt termination may have been "predicated on negative stereotypes" about Venezuelan migrants - something Sauer bitterly disputed in their appeal.
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"Forceful condemnations of gang violence and broad questioning of the integrity of the prior administration's immigration practices, including potential abuses of the TPS program, do not evince discriminatory intent," Sauer said, describing Judge Chen's descriptions as "cherry picked" and "wrongly portrayed" as "racially tinged."
A Supreme Court stay would allow the Trump administration to move forward with plans to immediately remove these migrants, which Sauer argued they should be able to do. Plaintiffs have until Thursday to respond to the Supreme Court.
