The Supreme Court has upheld President Trump's authority to deport more than 300,000 Venezuelans who received a form of amnesty from Joe Biden.
The ruling wasn't close, with only one liberal justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, voicing dissent. The case has to do with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which was abused during the Biden era to wave hundreds of thousands of aliens into the country from nations like Venezuela and Haiti.
Established in 1990, TPS was meant to allow immigrants fleeing war or disaster to live and work temporarily in the United States. Under Biden, TPS was repurposed into another weapon or tool in an effort to permanently resettle millions of people in the United States.
Biden's Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, renewed TPS status for nearly 1 million immigrants shortly before the end of Biden's term, giving the whole game away.
The Trump administration has emphasized that temporary legal status should be just that - temporary. In February, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem revoked TPS for 350,000 Venezuelans, finding that a Biden-era extension was "contrary to the national interest."
A district court blocked Noem's move nationwide, continuing a pattern of judicial activism that has prevented Trump from exercising the core powers of his office.
The ruling from District Court Judge Edward Chen "wrested control of the nation's immigration policy away from the Executive Branch and imposed the court's own perception," Trump's Solicitor General John Sauer wrote to the Supreme Court.
"The district court's decision undermines the Executive Branch's inherent powers as to immigration and foreign affairs," Sauer wrote.
Chen, an Obama appointee, claimed that Trump had singled out Venezuelans because of race. The judge insisted there were no good reasons for ending their TPS status, pointing to the supposed economic benefits of letting them live and work in the U.S. continually.
The Supreme Court's ruling lifts Chen's blatantly political injunction, allowing Trump to move forward with deportation proceedings while litigation continues.
Ahilan Arulanantham, one of the lawyers for the Venezuelans, called Trump's move "the largest single action stripping any group of noncitizens of immigration status in modern US history.”
The tone of this complaint could almost lead one to think that Trump was trying to strip Americans of their citizenship. His critics clearly do not see any distinction between a temporary legal status and a guaranteed right to reside in the U.S. permanently.
While the Supreme Court has ruled against Trump in other immigration disputes, they're getting out of the way this time and letting him do his job.
Rightfully so: the case is so clear-cut than only one liberal justice (a Biden appointee) disagreed with the court.
It's really simple: if Biden can wave in hundreds of thousands of at the stroke of a pen, then Trump can send them back.
