The Supreme Court on Mon­day al­lowed the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion to strip le­gal pro­tec­tions from 350,000 Venezue­lans, po­ten­tial­ly ex­pos­ing them to de­por­ta­tion.

The court’s or­der, with on­ly one not­ed dis­sent, puts on hold a rul­ing from a fed­er­al judge in San Fran­cis­co that kept in place Tem­po­rary Pro­tect­ed Sta­tus for the Venezue­lans that would have oth­er­wise ex­pired last month. The jus­tices pro­vid­ed no ra­tio­nale, which is com­mon in emer­gency ap­peals.

The sta­tus al­lows peo­ple al­ready in the Unit­ed States to live and work legal­ly be­cause their na­tive coun­tries are deemed un­safe for re­turn due to nat­ur­al dis­as­ter or civ­il strife.

The high court’s or­der ap­pears to be the “sin­gle largest ac­tion in mod­ern Amer­i­can his­to­ry strip­ping any group of non-cit­i­zens of im­mi­gra­tion sta­tus,” said Ahi­lan Aru­lanan­tham, one of the at­tor­neys for Venezue­lan mi­grants.

“This de­ci­sion will force fam­i­lies to be in an im­pos­si­ble po­si­tion ei­ther choos­ing to sur­vive or choos­ing sta­bil­i­ty,” said Ce­cil­ia Gon­za­lez Her­rera, who sued to try and stop the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion from re­vok­ing le­gal pro­tec­tions from her and oth­ers like her.

“Venezue­lans are not crim­i­nals,” Gon­za­lez Her­rera said.

“We all de­serve the chance to thrive with­out be­ing sent back to dan­ger,” she said.

The ram­i­fi­ca­tions for the hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple af­fect­ed aren’t yet clear, Aru­lanan­tham said.

Mar­i­ana Moleros, her hus­band and their daugh­ter left their na­tive Venezuela in Sep­tem­ber 2005 af­ter re­ceiv­ing death threats for their open po­lit­i­cal op­po­si­tion to the so­cial­ist gov­ern­ment. They came to the Unit­ed States hop­ing to find peace and pro­tec­tion and re­quest­ed asy­lum, but their ap­pli­ca­tion was de­nied.

They were tem­porar­i­ly grant­ed TPS but now they live in fear again — fear of be­ing de­tained and de­port­ed to a coun­try where they don’t feel safe.

“To­day we are all ex­posed to be­ing im­pris­oned in Venezuela if the U.S. re­turn us,” said Moleros, a 44-year-old Venezue­lan at­tor­ney who lives in Flori­da. “They should not de­port some­one who is at risk of be­ing as­sas­si­nat­ed, tor­ture and in­car­cer­at­ed.”

A fed­er­al ap­peals court had ear­li­er re­ject­ed the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s re­quest to put the or­der on hold while the law­suit con­tin­ues. A hear­ing is set for next week in front of U.S. Dis­trict Judge Ed­ward Chen, who had paused the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s plans.

In a state­ment, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty called the court’s de­ci­sion a “win for the Amer­i­can peo­ple and the safe­ty of our com­mu­ni­ties” and said the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion “ex­ploit­ed pro­grams to let poor­ly vet­ted mi­grants in­to this coun­try.”

“The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is re­in­sti­tut­ing in­tegri­ty in­to our im­mi­gra­tion sys­tem to keep our home­land and its peo­ple safe,” said spokes­woman Tri­cia McLaugh­lin.

The case is the lat­est in a string of emer­gency ap­peals Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion has made to the Supreme Court, many of them re­lat­ed to im­mi­gra­tion and in­volv­ing Venezuela. Last week, the gov­ern­ment asked the court to al­low it to end hu­man­i­tar­i­an pa­role for hun­dreds of thou­sands of im­mi­grants from Cu­ba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, set­ting them up for po­ten­tial de­por­ta­tion as well.

The high court al­so has been in­volved in slow­ing Trump’s ef­forts to swift­ly de­port Venezue­lans ac­cused of be­ing gang mem­bers to a prison in El Sal­vador un­der an 18th cen­tu­ry wartime law called the Alien En­e­mies Act.

The com­plex eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal cri­sis in Venezuela has dri­ven more than 7.7 mil­lion peo­ple to leave the South Amer­i­can na­tion since 2013. Venezuela’s most re­cent eco­nom­ic trou­bles pushed year-over-year in­fla­tion in April to 172%. The lat­est chap­ter even prompt­ed Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro to de­clare an “eco­nom­ic emer­gency” last month. Maduro, whose re­elec­tion last year to a third term has been con­demned in­ter­na­tion­al­ly as il­le­git­i­mate, al­so has cracked down on his po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents.

In the dis­pute over TPS, the ad­min­is­tra­tion has moved ag­gres­sive­ly to with­draw var­i­ous pro­tec­tions that have al­lowed im­mi­grants to re­main in the coun­try, in­clud­ing end­ing the tem­po­rary pro­tect­ed sta­tus for a to­tal of 600,000 Venezue­lans and 500,000 Haitians. That sta­tus is grant­ed in 18-month in­cre­ments. Venezuela was first des­ig­nat­ed for TPS in 2021; Haiti, in 2010.

Last week, DHS an­nounced that TPS for Afghanistan, first pro­vid­ed in 2022, would end in mid-Ju­ly.

The pro­tec­tions for Venezue­lans had been set to ex­pire April 7, but Chen found that the ex­pi­ra­tion threat­ened to se­vere­ly dis­rupt the lives of hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple and could cost bil­lions in lost eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

Chen, who was ap­point­ed to the bench by De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, found the gov­ern­ment hadn’t shown any harm caused by keep­ing the pro­gram alive.

But So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al D. John Sauer wrote on be­half of the ad­min­is­tra­tion that Chen’s or­der im­per­mis­si­bly in­ter­feres with the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s pow­er over im­mi­gra­tion and for­eign af­fairs.

In ad­di­tion, Sauer told the jus­tices, peo­ple af­fect­ed by end­ing the pro­tect­ed sta­tus might have oth­er le­gal op­tions to try to re­main in the coun­try be­cause the “de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate TPS is not equiv­a­lent to a fi­nal re­moval or­der.”

Con­gress cre­at­ed TPS in 1990 to pre­vent de­por­ta­tions to coun­tries suf­fer­ing from nat­ur­al dis­as­ters or civ­il strife.

Jus­tice Ke­tan­ji Brown Jack­son said she would have re­ject­ed the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s emer­gency ap­peal. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by MARK SHER­MAN | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Regi­na Gar­cia Cano in Cara­cas, Venezuela, Gisela Sa­lomon in Mi­a­mi and Lind­say White­hurst con­tributed to this re­port.