A federal appeals court on Aug. 29 blocked the Trump administration’s move to rescind the temporary protected status (TPS) that prevents 600,000 Venezuelans from being deported from the United States.

TPS is a designation that allows individuals from countries affected by armed conflict, natural disasters, or other extraordinary events to remain in the United States. The designation allows the federal government to develop a path to citizenship for qualifying immigrants who cannot return home safely.

On Feb. 3, the Trump administration said it was ending the status for Venezuela because the conditions in that country had improved enough that the federal government could no longer justify shielding Venezuelan citizens present in the United States from removal.

Before that, 10 days before President Joe Biden left office, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had extended the status for Venezuela for 18 months.

“The extension of TPS is due to extraordinary and temporary conditions that prevent eligible Venezuelan nationals from safely returning,” the department said in a statement on Jan. 10.

DHS said at the time that the extension was justified because Venezuela is facing a “severe humanitarian emergency … under the inhumane Maduro regime.”

“These conditions have contributed to high levels of crime and violence, impacting access to food, medicine, healthcare, water, electricity, and fuel,” the department stated.

Then, in March, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen issued an order finding that the plaintiffs challenging the change in status would probably succeed at trial.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s actions in rescinding the status “appear predicated on negative stereotypes casting class-wide aspersions on their character (insinuating they were released from Venezuelan prisons and mental health facilities and imposed huge financial burdens on local communities),” Chen said in his ruling at the time.

Chen said the decision to halt the program “for reasons of national security” wasn’t backed by evidence.

“Venezuelan TPS holders have lower rates of criminality than the general population,” he said.

“Generalization of criminality to the Venezuelan TPS population as a whole is baseless and smacks of racism predicated on generalized false stereotypes.”

On May 19, the Supreme Court temporarily stayed Chen’s order while an appeal was pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Solicitor General D. John Sauer had asked the Supreme Court to rule that Chen had exceeded his authority.

Sauer had argued that the judge’s 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.

On Aug. 29, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit issued the new ruling in National TPS Alliance v. Noem, affirming Chen’s order and granting a nationwide injunction blocking the status change.

The panel determined that the plaintiffs challenging the policy would probably succeed in their claim that Noem lacked legal authority to withdraw the protective status for the Venezuelans concerned.

Circuit Judge Kim Wardlaw said in the panel’s ruling that the statute that created TPS was “designed to constrain the Executive, creating predictable periods of safety and legal status for TPS beneficiaries.”

“Sudden reversals of prior decisions contravene the statute’s plain language and purpose,” she said.

“Here, hundreds of thousands of people have been stripped of status and plunged into uncertainty.”

The stability associated with TPS has been supplanted by “fears of family separation, detention, and deportation.”

“Congress did not contemplate this, and the ongoing irreparable harm to Plaintiffs warrants a remedy pending a final adjudication on the merits,” she said.

The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

Sam Dorman contributed to this report.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared Aug. 29, 2025, in The Epoch Times. It was updated Aug. 31, 2025.

Photo: DHS Secretary Kristi Noem