A federal judge has paused the Trump administration’s plans to lift protections from deportation for more than 600,000 Venezuelans, writing that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to do so “smacks of racism.”

The swift effort to rescind protections for Venezuelans, as well as the Trump administration's rhetoric on the issue, featured heavily in the Monday decision from California-based U.S. District Judge Edward Chen.

Chen determined the government did not follow proper procedure for stripping Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from those being deported, and that the administration was “motivated at least in part by animus.”

“As discussed in other parts of this order, the Secretary’s rationale is entirely lacking in evidentiary support. For example, there is no evidence that Venezuelan TPS holders are members of the [Tren de Aragua]  gang, have connections to the gang, and/or commit crimes,” Chen wrote, noting that “Venezuelan TPS holders have lower rates of criminality than the general population and have higher education rates than the broader U.S. population. 

“Generalization of criminality to the Venezuelan TPS population as a whole is baseless and smacks of racism predicated on generalized false stereotypes.” 

The order postpones plans by the Trump administration to lift TPS for a group of roughly 350,000 Venezuelans otherwise set to expire April 7. Another 250,000 are set to lose the protections in September. As the case continues, the court will also weigh a decision to strip protections from Haitians.  

Noem moved to rescind TPS for Venezuelans just days after taking office, complaining that the Biden administration extended the protections to “to tie our hands.”

Officials, however, are required to analyze a number of factors both for offering and rescinding TPS, including conditions on the ground in the prospective deportees' home country.

Chen noted that Venezuela is “a country so rife with economic and political upheaval and danger that the State Department has categorized Venezuela as a ‘Level 4: Do Not Travel’ country” due to crime and civil unrest. 

The judge also said the department had failed to justify stripping the protections, offering criticism of Noem at various turns, noting she was the first to issue a vacatur of an extension of TPS in the program's 35-year history.

“The sequence of events related to Secretary Noem’s decision-making on the TPS designations here is clearly anomalous. As Plaintiffs note, the decision-making process for the vacatur and termination ‘took place over a week, at most’ and at the very outset of the second Trump administration,” he wrote.

“The lack of evidentiary support for the termination of the 2023 Designation further indicates that the termination was motivated at least in part by animus.”