A San Francisco-based federal judge on Sept. 5 ruled the Trump administration may not cancel the temporary protected status (TPS) that prevents Venezuelans and Haitians 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.

Earlier this year, the federal government said conditions in Venezuela and Haiti had improved enough to justify removing the TPS designations. In May, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the Trump administration’s decision to remove the designation for Venezuelans.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to revoke TPS was unlawful.

For 35 years, he said in his ruling, presidential administrations have enforced the TPS law using available information and conferring with other federal agencies in “a process that involves careful study and analysis.”

“Until now,” Chen added.

Noem should not have revoked the status of the TPS holders, “sending them back to conditions that are so dangerous that even the State Department advises against travel to their home countries.”

“The Secretary’s action in revoking TPS was not only unprecedented in the manner and speed in which it was taken but also [violates] the law,” he said.

The judge ruled in the case, known as National TPS Alliance v. Noem, that in canceling the TPS designations that had been issued by the Biden administration, Noem’s actions were “arbitrary and capricious, and thus must be set aside under the Administrative Procedure Act.”

The Administrative Procedure Act is a federal statute enacted in 1946 that governs administrative law procedures for federal executive departments and independent agencies. The late U.S. Sen. Pat McCarran (D-Nev.) said the law was “a bill of rights for the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose affairs are controlled or regulated in one way or another by agencies of the federal government.”

The TPS statute, enacted in 1990, was intended “to bring coherence, discipline, and [predictability] to the extended voluntary departure process that existed prior to 1990,” Chen said.

The judge said the Trump administration terminated the TPS “on an unprecedentedly rapid timeline.” Its decision-making process was “highly truncated and condensed, taking place over a short period of time (in the case of Venezuela, just days) and, apparently, without the consultation of the appropriate agencies.”

The judge directed the clerk of the court to immediately enter a final judgment in favor of the plaintiffs challenging the revocation of the TPS designations.

“There is no just reason for delay,” when it is likely the government will appeal this ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit or the Supreme Court, he said.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is part of the legal team representing the plaintiffs, hailed the new ruling.

“Today, the trial court recognized what has been clear from day one—the Trump administration acted illegally in stripping hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and Haitians of humanitarian protected status,” Emi MacLean, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, said in a statement.

Chen’s ruling shields 600,000 Venezuelans whose protected status lapsed in April or was to run out on Sept. 10. The order also maintains the status for approximately 500,000 Haitians.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an August statement that “Temporary Protected Status was always meant to be just that: Temporary.”

“TPS was never meant to be a de facto asylum system, yet that is how previous administrations have used it for decades while allowing hundreds of thousands of foreigners into the country without proper vetting,” she said.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Department of Justice for comment. No reply was received by publication time.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared Sept. 5, 2025, in The Epoch Times. It was updated Sept. 6, 2025.