The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it will allow, for now, the Trump administration to terminate temporary protections for a group of 350,000 Venezuelans, striking down a lower court’s order that blocked the process.

The order still means the group of Venezuelans on Temporary Protected Status — a designation given to nationals from countries deemed too dangerous to return to remain in the U.S. — will be able to continue to challenge in court the end of their work permits and the possibility of removal. But they no longer have protections from deportation. 

No justices signed onto the ruling, which is typical in cases brought before the high court on an emergency basis, but liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted she would have denied the request.

TPS status for that group of Venezuelans — a portion of Venezuelans living in the United States, not all of them — was set to end on April 7 under a move by the Trump administration.

But U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of the Northern District of California in March blocked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to vacate an extension of TPS protections that had been put in place by the Biden administration until October 2026.

The case is now before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Chen, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, blocked the Trump administration from removing protections for that group of Venezuelans on the basis that Noem’s actions were “arbitrary and capricious,” and potentially motivated by racism.

“Acting on the basis of a negative group stereotype and generalizing such stereotype to the entire group is the classic example of racism,” Chen wrote in his order.

Noem cited gang activity as her reason for not extending TPS for the group of 350,000 Venezuelans, who came to the United States in 2023.

A second group of 250,000 Venezuelans who were granted TPS in 2021 will have their work and deportation protections expire in September. Chen’s order did not apply to the second group of Venezuelans.

Those with TPS have deportation protections and are allowed to work and live in the United States for 18 months, unless extended by the DHS secretary.

Democrats criticized Monday’s decision, including Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet.

“Ending protections for Venezuelans fleeing Maduro’s regime is cruel, short-sighted, and destabilizing,” he wrote on social media.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington state, wrote on social media that Venezuelans “face extreme oppression, arbitrary detention, extrajudicial killings, and torture — the exact type of situation that requires our government to provide TPS.”

Monday’s order is one of several immigration-related emergency requests from the Trump administration before the Supreme Court.

Last week, the high court heard oral arguments that stemmed from an executive order signed by President Donald Trump to end the constitutional right to birthright citizenship.

And justices in a separate case, again, denied the Trump administration from resuming the deportations of Venezuelans under an 18th-century wartime law known as the Alien Enemies Act. 

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem walks past reporters after doing a TV interview with Fox News outside of the White House on March 10, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem Monday announced about 9,000 Afghans living in the United States who had been protected from deportation will no longer be shielded as of mid-July.

After the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in 2022, the Biden administration designated Temporary Protected Status, along with other legal temporary status pathways, for thousands of Afghans who aided the U.S. against the Taliban terrorist group and fled their home country. Thirteen U.S. military members were killed in the chaotic withdrawal at the Kabul airport.

About 80,000 Afghans came to the U.S. and settled in various programs that offered legal protections and work authorization. Of that group, 9,000 were designated TPS.

TPS is granted to nationals whose home country is deemed too dangerous to return due to violence or disasters.

The TPS designation for Afghanistan will expire on May 20 and deportation protections will lift on July 12. The order is likely to face legal challenges, since Noem’s moves to curtail TPS for other nationals have faced lawsuits.

“This administration is returning TPS to its original temporary intent,” Noem said in a statement. “We’ve reviewed the conditions in Afghanistan with our interagency partners, and they do not meet the requirements for a TPS designation. Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent(s) them from returning to their home country.”

The termination of the status comes as the Trump administration fast-tracked the classification of refugees for white South Africans who landed in the U.S. Monday at Dulles International Airport in Virginia.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February that noted Afrikaners — an ethnic group in South Africa made up of European descendants, predominantly Dutch — are “victims of unjust racial discrimination” after South Africa’s government passed a land ownership law in an effort to address land dispossession that occurred under apartheid.

The Trump administration suspended all refugee services in late January and has resisted a district court’s order to reinstate the program, along with contracts to organizations that facilitate refugee resettlement services.

Noem said that determination to end TPS for Afghanistan was based on a review from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Afghanistan’s conditions along with input from the State Department.

The Taliban currently control the government and the State Department’s travel advisory for the country is the highest level, a 4, which means it advises against traveling.

DHS added in a statement that Noem “further determined that permitting Afghan nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to the national interest of the United States.”

Noem has also ended TPS for Venezuelans and Haitians.

The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court in early May to lift a lower court’s order that reversed Noem’s decision to end TPS for one group of Venezuelans. 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem delivers remarks to staff at the department's Washington, D.C., headquarters on Jan. 28, 2025. (Photo by Manuel Balce Ceneta-Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Justice Department made an emergency request to the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, asking the justices to lift a lower court’s freeze on the Trump administration’s plans to terminate work authorization and deportation protection for more than 350,000 Venezuelans residing in the United States.

The request to the high court filed by Solicitor General D. John Sauer said an order from a federal judge in California stripped a national security-based power from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“So long as the order is in effect, the Secretary must permit hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan nationals to remain in the country, notwithstanding her reasoned determination that doing so is ‘contrary to the national interest,’” Sauer wrote.

The emergency appeal, which asks the court to rule as soon as possible, was not available on the Supreme Court website late Thursday afternoon but a copy was uploaded by Politico.

The appeal came after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the administration’s request to pause an order from a trial court that blocked Noem’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status for one group of Venezuelans whose protections President Joe Biden extended.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of the Northern District of California issued a nationwide pause in early April, noting the immigrant rights groups and TPS holders who brought the suit had a strong claim under the equal protection clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment because Noem has “made sweeping negative generalizations about Venezuelan TPS beneficiaries.”

The equal protection clause was meant to bar the government from discriminating against classes of people.

Chen was appointed by former President Barack Obama in 2011.

President Joe Biden granted protections until October 2026 for two groups of Venezuelans. His administration granted about 250,000 Venezuelans TPS in 2021 and 350,000 more in 2023.

Noem cited gang activity as her reason for not extending TPS for the 2023 group of Venezuelans, which, without a court intervention, were set to end in early April after she vacated the protections set under the Biden administration.

TPS allows nationals from certain countries deemed too dangerous to return to remain in the U.S. temporarily. Those with the status have deportation protections and are allowed to work and live in the U.S. for 18 months, unless extended by the Homeland Security secretary.

A U.S. Border Patrol official vehicle  is shown parked near the border. (Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Judiciary Republicans Wednesday worked in committee on a portion of a major legislative package that would help fund President Donald Trump’s plans to conduct mass deportations of people living in the United States without permanent legal status.

The Judiciary panel’s $81 billion share of the “one, big beautiful” bill the president has requested of Congress would provide $45 billion for immigration detention centers, $8 billion to hire thousands of immigration enforcement officers and more than $14 billion for deportations, among other things.

The border security and immigration funds are part of a massive package that wraps together White House priorities including tax cuts and defense spending boosts. Republicans are pushing the deal through using a special procedure known as reconciliation that will allow the Senate GOP to skirt its usual 60-vote threshold when that chamber acts.

House Republicans returning from a two-week recess kicked off their work on reconciliation Tuesday, approving three of 11 bills out of committees on Armed Services, Education and Workforce and Homeland Security.

On Wednesday, lawmakers continued work on the various sections of the reconciliation bill with markups — which means a bill is debated and potentially amended or rewritten — in the Financial Services, Judiciary, Transportation and Infrastructure and Oversight and Government Reform committees.

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana said Republicans will spend the rest of this week and next debating the 11 separate bills in committees. Committees when they finish their measures will send them to the House Budget Committee, which is expected to bundle them together prior to a floor vote.

The Judiciary panel’s 116-page bill vastly overhauls U.S. asylum laws. It would, for example, create a fee structure for asylum seekers that would set a minimum cost for an application at no less than $1,000. Applications now are free.

“These and other resources and fees in this reconciliation bill will ensure the Trump administration has the adequate resources to enforce the immigration laws in a fiscally responsible way,” GOP Chair Jim Jordan of Ohio said.

The bill would establish a $1,000 fee for immigrants granted temporary protected status, which would mean they would have work authorizations and deportation protections.

It would also require sponsors to pay $3,500 to take in an unaccompanied minor who crosses the border without a legal status. Typically, unaccompanied minors are released to sponsors who are family members living in the United States.

The bill would also require immigrants without permanent legal status to pay a $550 fee for work permits every six months.

The top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, slammed the bill as targeting immigrants.

“Every day, this administration uses immigration enforcement as a template to erode constitutional rights and liberties,” he said.

A final committee vote was expected Wednesday night.

‘A giveaway to ICE’

The Judiciary bill directs half of the fees collected from asylum seekers to go toward the agency that handles U.S. immigration courts, but Democrats criticized the provisions as creating a barrier for asylum seekers.

“The so-called immigration fees that are in this bill are really fines and nothing but a cruel attempt to make immigrating to this country impossible,” Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal said.

Democratic Rep. Chuy Garcia of Illinois, said the bill would not only “gut asylum” but would significantly increase funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention.

Funding for ICE detention this fiscal year is roughly $3.4 billion, but the Judiciary bill would sharply increase that to $45 billion.

Garcia called the increase a “a giveaway to ICE, a rogue agency that’s terrorizing communities and clamping (down) on civil liberties and the Constitution itself, because they’ve been directed to do so by this president.”

House Republicans have also included language that would move the Federal Trade Commission into the Department of Justice’s antitrust division, a move Democrats argued would kneecap the FTC’s regulatory authority.

“You’re trying to shutter the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, making it harder for us to enforce our antitrust laws,” Democratic Rep. Becca Balint of Vermont said.

Consumer protections to take a hit

Lawmakers on the House Committee on Financial Services met in a lengthy, and at times tense, session to finalize legislation to cut “no less than” $1 billion from government programs and services under the panel’s jurisdiction, according to the budget resolution Congress approved in April.

Funds in the crosshairs include those previously authorized for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and grants provided under the Biden administration-era Inflation Reduction Act for homeowners to improve energy efficiency.

Chair French Hill said the committee “will do its part to reduce the deficit and decrease direct spending, so that Congress can enact pro-growth tax policies.”

“And remember, today, we are here with one purpose, to do our part to put our nation back on a responsible fiscal trajectory,” the Arkansas Republican said.

Democrats introduced dozens of amendments during the hourslong session to block cuts to community block grants and programs protecting consumers, including veterans, from illegal credit and lending practices.

Ranking member Maxine Waters said committee Republicans’ plans to cut the CFPB by 70% “is ridiculous.”

“The bureau has saved American consumers $21 billion by returning to them funds that big banks and predatory lenders swindled out of them,” said Waters, a California Democrat.

Congress created the CFPB in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, when subprime mortgage lending cascaded into bank failures and home and job losses.

Republicans opposed amendment after amendment.

Rep. María Salazar of Florida tossed a copy of one of Waters’ lengthy amendments straight into a trash can after a staffer handed it to her. Michigan’s Rep. Bill Huizenga held up proceedings for several minutes when he accused Waters of breaking the rules by not distributing enough paper copies of her amendment.

“We cannot allow our government to continue spending money like there are no consequences,” GOP Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska said in response to several Democratic amendments.

A final committee vote was expected Wednesday night.

Transportation section adds fees on electric vehicles

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee also approved, by a party line 36-30 vote, reconciliation instructions that would cut $10 billion from the federal deficit while boosting spending for the U.S. Coast Guard and the air traffic control system.

Like other portions of the larger reconciliation package, the transportation committee’s instructions would add funding for national security and border enforcement, through the Coast Guard funding, while cutting money from programs favored by Democrats, including climate programs and any spending that could be construed as race-conscious.

The bill would provide $21.2 billion for the Coast Guard and $12.5 billion for air traffic control systems. It would raise money through a $250 annual fee on electric vehicles and a $100 annual fee on hybrids, while also cutting $4.6 billion from climate programs created in Democrats’ 2022 reconciliation package.

Chairman Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican, said the measure included priorities for members of both parties, as well as business and labor interests.

“We all want to invest in our Coast Guard,” he said. “We all want to rebuild our air traffic control system and finally address the broken Highway Trust Fund. We have held countless hearings on all of these topics, both recently and, frankly, for years. And now members have the opportunity to actually act.”

Democrats on the panel complained that the reconciliation package was a partisan exercise and a departure from the panel’s normally congenial approach to business. They introduced dozens of amendments over the daylong committee meeting seeking to add funding for various programs. None were adopted.

“The larger Republican reconciliation package will add more than $15 trillion in new debt, gives away $7 trillion in deficit-financed tax cuts to the wealthy and slashes access to health care and food assistance for families,” ranking Democrat Rick Larsen of Washington said. “Given that, I think we’re going to have to vote no on the bill before us.”

The vehicle fees, which would be deposited into the Highway Trust Fund that sends highway and transit money to states, created a partisan divide Wednesday.

Federal gas taxes provide the lion’s share of deposits to the fund and Republicans argued that, because drivers of electric vehicles pay no gas taxes and hybrid drivers pay less than those who drive gas-powered cars, the provision would make the contributions fairer.

Republicans scrapped a proposed $20 annual fee on gas-powered cars, which Graves said was meant to “start a conversation” on the solvency of the Highway Trust Fund. But the provision “became a political distraction that no longer centered around seriously addressing the problem,” he said.

Pennsylvania Democrat Chris Deluzio criticized the vehicle fees, noting Republicans were pursuing additional revenue opportunities to offset losses from tax cuts.

“I don’t know when you guys became the tax-and-spend liberals,” Deluzio told his Republican colleagues. “But I guess the taxing of car owners so you can pay for tax giveaways to billionaires is your new strategy. Good luck with that.”

Federal employee benefits targeted

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform voted nearly along party lines, 22-21, to send its portion of the reconciliation package to the Budget Committee, with Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner joining Democrats in opposition.

Turner was the first GOP lawmaker to cast a committee vote against reconciliation instructions this year.

The legislation hits at federal employee benefits and comes as the Trump administration continues to overhaul the federal workforce.

Part of the bill would raise federal employees’ required retirement contribution to a rate of 4.4% of their salary and eliminate an additional retirement annuity payment for federal employees who retire before the age of 62, while cutting more than $50 billion from the federal deficit.

At his committee’s markup, Chairman James Comer said the legislation “advances important budgetary reforms that will save taxpayers money.”

The Kentucky Republican acknowledged that the chief investigative committee in the U.S. House has “very limited jurisdiction to help reduce the federal budget deficit,” noting that the panel is “empowered to pursue civil service reforms, including federal employee benefits and reining in the influence of partisan and unaccountable government employee unions.”

But Democrats on the panel blasted the committee’s portion of the reconciliation package, saying the bill chips away at federal employees’ protections.

Rep. Stephen Lynch, the top Democrat on the panel, said congressional Republicans instructed the panel to target the federal workforce with roughly $50 billion in funding cuts “regardless of the impact on hard-working, loyal federal employees and their critical services that they provide to the American people.”

The Massachusetts Democrat said the bill “threatens to further undermine the federal workforce by reducing the take-home pay, the benefits and workforce protections of 2.4 million federal employees, most of whom are middle-class Americans and a third of whom are military veterans.”

Ohio’s Turner, who voted against the legislation because of the provision reducing pension benefits, said he supported the overall reconciliation package and hoped the pension measure would be stripped before a floor vote.

Turner said “making changes to pension retirement benefits in the middle of someone’s employment is wrong.”