A federal appeals court on Friday blocked the Trump administration’s plans to end protections for 600,000 people from Venezuela who have had permission to live and work in the United States.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California upheld a lower court ruling that maintained temporary protected status, or TPS, for Venezuelans while the case proceeded through court.
An email to the Department of Homeland Security for comment was not immediately returned.
The 9th Circuit panel found that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim that the department had no authority to vacate or set aside a prior TPS extension because the governing statute written by Congress does not permit for it.
“In enacting the TPS statute, Congress designed a system of temporary status that was predictable, dependable, and insulated from electoral politics,” the court wrote.
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco found in March that plaintiffs were likely to prevail on their claim that the administration overstepped its authority in terminating the protections and were motivated by racial animus in doing so. Chen ordered a freeze on the terminations, but the Supreme Court reversed him without explanation, which is common in emergency appeals.
It is unclear what effect Friday’s ruling will have on the estimated 350,000 Venezuelans whose protections expired in April. Protections for another group of 250,000 Venezuelans are set to expire Sept. 10.
Congress authorized temporary protected status as part of the Immigration Act of 1990. It allows the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to grant legal immigration status to people fleeing countries experiencing civil strife, environmental disaster or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions” that prevent a safe return to that home country.
In ending the protections, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that conditions in both Haiti and Venezuela had improved and that it was not in the national interest to allow migrants from the two countries to stay on for what is a temporary program.
Millions of Venezuelans have fled political unrest, mass unemployment and hunger. The country is mired in a prolonged crisis brought on by years of hyperinflation, political corruption, economic mismanagement and an ineffectual government.
