Los Angeles, CA --  In Reaction to the Supreme Court Ruling in NTPSA 1 v. Noem, Martha Arevalo,  CARECEN-LA Executive Director, released the following statement:

“Today’s decision by the Supreme Court to grant the government’s request for a stay, without explanation and in direct defiance of repeated lower court rulings, marks a devastating setback for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan TPS holders and their families.

This disheartening action is an egregious outcome and yet another sign of the lawlessness and corruption overtaking our highest court. By siding with the Trump Administration’s unlawful rush to strip away protections, the Court has chosen to prioritize and enable the use of cruel executive power over the well-being and stability of families who have lived and worked legally in this country, many for years.

Temporary Protected Status was created precisely to protect people from being returned to countries in the midst of humanitarian crises and has been exercised by both Democrats and Republicans alike. Just months ago, the U.S. government itself affirmed that Venezuela continues to face “a complex, serious and multidimensional humanitarian crisis,” making return unsafe. Yet the Court’s action today threatens to expose hundreds of thousands of people, including children, workers, and mixed-status families, to job loss, deportation, and the trauma of family separation.

We echo Justice Jackson’s powerful dissent: “There is no justification for this extraordinary intervention. The lower courts carefully reviewed the facts and the law, finding the termination of TPS unlawful. They also recognized the human cost of forcing families into chaos while the appeals process continues.”

CARECEN-LA, as a co-anchor organization of the National TPS Alliance, stands in unwavering solidarity with our partners and the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan families whose futures are at stake. We will continue fighting in the courts, in Congress, and in our communities until justice prevails.”

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CARECEN, the largest Central American immigrant rights organization in the country, empowers Central Americans and all immigrants by defending human and civil rights, working for social and economic justice, and promoting cultural diversity. We envision Los Angeles becoming a place where Central Americans and all other communities live in peace and dignity, enjoying economic well-being, social justice, and political empowerment. Since its founding in 1983, when thousands of Central Americans fled the brutality of civil war, CARECEN has been working to change an unjust immigration system, win legal status for immigrants, and foster community activism on issues such as education reform, workers’ and immigrants’ rights, economic justice and community strengthening.