The Supreme Court delivered another victory for President Trump on the issue of illegal migration on Monday. The High Court reversed a decision by an Obama-appointed judge that had blocked the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for illegal aliens from Venezuela.
Enacted in 1990, the TPS program grants temporary protection for illegal aliens from being deported to countries harmed by wars, earthquakes, or other life-threatening disruptions. But “temporary” is the key word here; beneficiaries of the TPS program are allowed to remain only for a while before returning home, yet Justice Alito observed that “TPS designations in practice have often lasted for decades.”
President Biden extended TPS to more than 600,000 illegal aliens from Venezuela by misusing this program. All told, migrants from 17 different countries totaling more than 1 million illegal aliens were being harbored by the Biden Administration under the TPS program before Trump took office.
Trump has successfully terminated 13 of the 17 designations, and on June 25 the Supreme Court upheld Trump’s authority to shut these programs down in Mullin v. Doe. This set a clear precedent for Trump to terminate the remaining TPS programs, too.
TPS does not bring the migrants here. The South American migrants mostly crossed our southern border illegally and then the TPS program has been used by Democrats to shelter them from being deported.
Venezuela and Haiti were two of the remaining countries with TPS, of which Venezuela poses the greater risk. The terrible Tren de Aragua gang is in Venezuela, and young men associated with that gang snuck into our country illegally and yet were not deported by the Biden administration.
On Monday, three alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were sentenced to 20 years in prison for kidnapping and torturing a Denver man in 2024, and a fourth defendant will be sentenced later this year. They had demanded a ransom from his wife and, when she did not pay it, they cut off the victim’s pinky finger.
President Biden granted special TPS protection to Venezuelans in 2021 and 2023. But there was no war in Venezuela, or a devastating earthquake, to justify keeping so many Venezuelans in our country.
Instead, there was a socialist regime, as is common in some South American nations, like Brazil today. The response to that is for the citizenry to defeat the socialist in power, as Brazilians took a step toward that on Sunday by voting against its incumbent President Lula.
When a gang of Venezuelan migrants besieged an apartment building in Colorado while brandishing guns, this became a campaign issue in 2024. The management company asserted that the migrants were also members of the notorious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Time to go home, Trump indicated, by terminating the TPS program for Venezuela, as Trump has done for more than a dozen countries. But an Obama-appointed judge has blocked this.
Federal District Judge Edward M. Chen accused Trump of having “animus” toward the Venezuelans, and of terminating TPS based on an improper discriminatory purpose. He held last year that this issue of animus could go before a jury to decide whether Trump and the Secretary of Homeland Security were improperly motivated by “animus,” which is silly because there is nothing unconstitutional about having animus toward aliens who enter our country illegally.
Trump’s Solicitor General John Sauer filed a petition to overturn this ruling with the Supreme Court on July 9, while the Court was on summer break. It reopened on Monday, and one of its first actions was to rule in favor of Trump by overruling the lower court decision against him.
The Court also held in favor of Trump on his partial termination of the TPS program for Haiti. Recall that the presence of tens of thousands of Haitians in Ohio, particularly in the town of Springfield, was a winning campaign issue that Trump forcefully spoke about at his debate with Kamala Harris.
Grassroots opposition to migration into Europe has led to success by conservative parties in elections there. The European Union tightened its rules against migration in response to the public opposition to it.
The current riots in the suburbs of Paris are concentrated where there are large immigrant populations, leading some to suspect that migrants are fomenting the unrest. The stated cause of poor school conditions seems unlikely to be the real source of the enormous violence.
Trump has kept that from occurring here by deporting foreign criminals and ending the sheltering of illegal aliens. This has prevented riots by disgruntled mobs that have blighted European countries, and which could happen in the U.S. if the pro-migration policies of Democrats return.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.