This week, the Supreme Court lifted a federal judge’s order that blocked the Trump administration from ending temporary legal protections for nearly 350,000 Venezuelans in the U.S., breaking open an opportunity for the president to potentially deport them.
Reuters reported that the Justice Department requested the justices lift an order halting Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to revoke temporary protected status (TPS) granted to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in the country.
The status is conferred to foreign citizens who cannot safely return to their home countries due to war, natural disasters, or other “extraordinary” conditions, which also gives them access to work permits. Some TPS holders, including members of the National TPS Alliance advocacy group, said Venezuela remains an unsafe country.
The May 19 unsigned decision noted that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would have dissented from the high court’s order, but the justices’ actual vote was not announced.
After the decision started making news headlines, several people, including Trump loyalists, went after Jackson on social media, insulting her status as a justice and her appointment to the country’s highest court.
“Ketanji Brown Jackson is a DEI plant who is just an activist who should have never been on the Supreme Court,” another person wrote.
“…the extremely low I.Q. Ketanji Brown Jackson !!” someone else added.
“She’s totally unqualified to serve on the Supreme Court,” another person wrote of Jackson.
Others backed Jackson, denouncing claims that she is “unqualified” for her position.
“Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is one of the most qualified jurists on the Supreme Court a former public defender, federal judge, and Harvard Law graduate. Disagreeing with her legal interpretation doesn’t make her unqualified; it just means she’s willing to stand by the Constitution, even when it’s unpopular. A lone dissent doesn’t signal incompetence it often signals courage,” one person wrote on X.
“People are going to hate hearing this, but Ketanji Brown Jackson is the most effective SC justice on the court,” someone else added. “She plays to win for her team while everyone else around her doesn’t understand how the game is even played.”
In March, Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Edward Chen said Noem’s actions threatened to “inflict irreparable harm on hundreds of thousands of persons whose lives, families, and livelihoods will be severely disrupted, cost the United States billions in economic activity, and injure public health and safety in communities throughout the United States.”
The Trump administration appealed the ruling, but an appeals court declined to pause Chen’s order, prompting the administration to take the matter up with the Supreme Court.
Even though the Supreme Court lifted the order, justices left migrants the opportunity to challenge the decision if the administration attempts to cancel work permits or other TPS-related documents that are set to expire in October 2026, which marks the end of the TPS period as established by former President Joe Biden.
The Department of Homeland Security has reported that 348,202 Venezuelans were registered under Biden’s 2023 TPS designation.
