Trump confirms military strike against alleged drug traffickers in Venezuela
President Donald Trump has confirmed his second US military strike against a suspected drug trafficker in Venezuela.
WASHINGTON – The Trump administration is once again asking the Supreme Court to strip deportation protections for more than 300,000 Venezuelan immigrants.
In an emergency request filed on September 19, the Justice Department said the High Court should suspend a federal judge’s ruling that the government accidentally ended a program that allows immigrants to temporarily live and work in the United States for its country’s living conditions.
The Supreme Court took sides with the administration at the early stages of the case. In May, the judge lifted a temporary federal judge’s order to maintain the program as the case was filing a lawsuit.
Earlier this month, San Francisco Judge Edward Chen announced his final ruling against the administration. Chen and the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to hold off its ruling while the administration appealed.
The Justice Department said the lower courts ignored previous interventions by the High Court.
“This court order binds the litigators and the lower courts,” Attorney General John Sauer said at his request. “Ignore them – as the lower courts did here – whether these orders are one sentence or extend to many pages – is not accepted.”
The court’s ruling does not include an explanation of why the administration was brought forward.
“It can only be deduced if no court rationale is provided,” the Court of Appeal said when explaining why the decision did not control the outcome at this stage of the lawsuit.
Additionally, the appeals judge said the court had more evidence to consider now, including the Department of Homeland Security carried out a “naked bone process” when it ended the program “in an unprecedented hurry, in an unprecedented way.”
“Neither we nor the Supreme Court had the advantage of reviewing this evidence when the government first sought an emergency stay for the District Court’s March 31 postponement order,” they wrote.
In February, Homeland Security Secretary Christi Noem ordered the end of a program called the temporary protection status for Venezuelans. She said immigrants will pay local governments and some Venezuelans are members of gang Tren de Aragua, whose president Donald Trump declared a foreign terrorist organization.
The advocacy group, National TPS Alliance and a small number of Venezuelans, suing, arguing that it was not safe for them to return to their home country.
Jessica Bansal, TPS advisor to TPS’ National Japan Labor Organization Network, said the Trump administration “has been spreading fear and chaos by systematically documenting legal immigrants and stripping people of immigrant status and job permission, with little notice.”
