A group of Venezuelans in California and two immigrant advocacy organizations in Maryland have filed two separate lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s decision to rescind temporary immigration protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans living in the United States.
Immigrant rights groups CASA and Make the Road New York on Thursday announced a federal lawsuit on behalf of their members seeking to reverse the president’s termination of Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans, who could soon face deportation. They argue the administration’s decision to end TPS for Venezuelans in April and September is unconstitutional and racially discriminatory.
“This unconstitutional action forces nearly 600,000 Venezuelans and their families currently living in the U.S. with TPS protection into the untenable position of potentially being forced to return to a country experiencing what has been described as one of the worst humanitarian crises in the history of the Western Hemisphere,” the groups said in a statement Thursday afternoon. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in Greenbelt, Maryland, against the Department of Homeland Security and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
