In a major legal move, a Venezuelan community group and several migrants have filed a lawsuit against federal immigration officials. They are fighting the Trump administration’s recent changes to immigration rules. The plaintiffs, which include the Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts, the advocacy group Democracy Forward, and three individual migrants, brought their case to a federal court in Boston.
They are specifically challenging the decision to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans, a policy that had been put in place earlier by the Biden administration. The lawsuit claims that former President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s move to cancel this protected status was both abrupt and illegal.
The plaintiffs pointed to a recent mass email from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as a major issue, per Fox News. The email reportedly told TPS recipients, “It is time for you to leave the United States,” a message the plaintiffs say violates these individuals’ legal rights. They argue that many of the migrants had applied for and received work permits and other legal documents, giving them the right to stay in the country.
DHS is trying a blanket method to revoke status
The DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the lawsuit was “a desperate attempt to keep half a million poorly vetted illegal aliens in this country and undermine President Trump’s constitutional authority to enforce America’s immigration laws… The Biden administration abused its parole authority to create an industrial-scale catch-and-release scheme, and the Trump administration is correcting that. This lawsuit is an insult to the tens of millions of Americans who gave this president a mandate to restore safety and common sense to our immigration system.”
The lawsuit states that ending TPS should be decided case by case, not through a sweeping policy shift, because the current move upends lives, threatens jobs, and puts people at risk of deportation. Officials from the Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts said the policy directly harms people who followed all DHS rules, including the CBP One process, and who worked hard to build stable lives for their families.
This lawsuit is part of a wider criticism of the new administration’s immigration policies. The president of Democracy Forward, Skye Perryman, said the “sudden policy shift” shows “Trump-Vance administration’s assault on immigrants who have followed the rules… Let me be clear: none of this is about immigration, it’s about cruelty and the targeting of people in vulnerable circumstances. Our clients used the CBP One app because DHS required it. To now strip them of their rights and threaten them with deportation is a gross violation of the law and public trust.”
Venezuelan migrants, progressive group sue Trump admin after Noem nixes Biden-era ‘protected status’ WTF? Supreme Court already ruled on this.
— LiberteaIL (@Liberty17673683) August 13, 2025
After Trump took office, Noem revoked the 2023 TPS extension, which set the ball rolling on the eventual cancellation of protected…
The legal disputes over TPS for Venezuelans started after the Trump administration took office. The Biden administration first granted special protections to Venezuelan migrants in 2021 for humanitarian reasons and later extended TPS in 2023, allowing around 350,000 more migrants who arrived after the original deadline to qualify. After the change in administration, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem canceled the 2023 extension, starting the process to remove protected status for these migrants. This decision immediately led to legal challenges.
It’s not much of a surprise that the Trump administration is pushing this so far. He keeps handing things off and pushing the limits of the law, and only stops when someone speaks up.
A three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in Pasadena, California, during a July appeal filed by the Trump administration. During the hearing, one judge reportedly called the president’s statements on the issue “arguably racist,” adding more controversy to the legal and political debate. This came after an earlier case where a federal judge said he found signs of “racial and discriminatory animus” in a Trump administration decision to cancel TPS.
