The dispute over the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans is going into the next round: After a federal judge stopped the project in March, the Ministry of Justice now moved to the Supreme Court.
In the event of a judicial stop for protective status cancellation, the US government moved to the Supreme Court for more than 350,000 Venezuelans. The US Ministry of Justice asked the Supreme Court to suspend the decision of a federal judge in California, which maintained temporary protection status for the Venezolans.
The judge of the first instance, Edward Chen, had argued that the plan of US Minister of Homeland, Kristi Noem “hundreds of thousands of people whose lives, families and livelihood is seriously disturbed, inflicts irreparable damage”.
Government argues with inadmissible intervention in powers
On behalf of the government, Attorney General John Sauer wrote that Chen's order is inadmissible in the government's powers. In addition, Sauer argued, the “decision to terminate the TPS (Temporary Protection Status) was not to be equated with a final deportation order”.
As long as the order is in force, the minister must “allow hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan citizens to remain in the country – regardless of their reasonable statement that this” contradicted the national interest “, Sauer argued in the conservatively dominated Supreme Court.
More Hundreds of thousands Foreigners affected
Protection for the Venezuelans concerned should expire on April 7 – the order thus gave the affected time to proceed legally against the project. Noem had also announced an end to the TPS for around 250,000 other Venezuelans in September. In addition, another 500,000 Haitians are affected, the protection of which expires in August.
The temporary protection status is granted in the USA foreign citizens who cannot safely return to their home countries due to war, natural disasters or other “extraordinary” circumstances. Shortly before Trump took office in January, his democratic predecessor Joe Biden had extended the TPS by another 18 months.
Deportations stopped according to the old war law
The urgent application to the Supreme Court on Thursday came almost simultaneously with the decision of a federal judge, who temporarily prohibited the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members from his area of responsibility in the state of Texas on the basis of an outdated war law. The cases are not connected.
The so -called Alien Enemies Act from 1798 could not be applied to people who think the Republican leadership for gang members who have marched into the United States, the judge argued. “Neither the court nor the parties question that the executive can instruct the arrest and removal of foreigners who are involved in criminal activities in the United States,” he added, but: “The appeal of the president on the AEA (alien enemies act) through the decree exceeds the framework of the law and runs contrary to the simple, normal importance of the concepts of the law.”
Trump argued when he announced his decree in March that the law intended for war had to be used here because activities of the Venezuelan gang tren de Aragua would be equal to an invasion of the United States.
