A national immigrant rights group and several Venezuelan plaintiffs, including a University of Central Florida student, are suing the Trump administration over its move to cancel the temporary protected status of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants.
The federal lawsuit filed by the National TPS Alliance and individuals including Cecilia Daniela González Herrera, a UCF student living in Kissimmee, was filed Feb. 19 in the Northern District of California. Many of those affected by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s efforts to vacate the Venezuelans’ TPS status live in the Sunshine State, where an estimated 400,000 people who fled the regimes of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro settled.
TPS status gives about 600,000 Venezuelan immigrants the ability to live and work legally in the nation, and the loss of such protections, which could come as early as the first week of April for many immigrants, would subject them to deportation, according to the lawsuit.
“Approximately 350,000 Venezuelan TPS holders stand to lose this humanitarian legal status on April 7, 2025, and their work authorization as soon as April 2, 2025,” the lawsuit states. “Secretary Noem announced the vacatur decision in an exclusive interview she gave to Fox News, saying that ‘the American people . .. want these dirtbags out of the country.’”
The complaint portrays the Venezuelan immigrants as a diverse population made up of educators, laborers, advocates, parents, students and children who would be subject to the political, economic and social upheavals if returned to the country they fled – an authoritarian regime with hundreds of political prisoners and a police force that arrests and detains people at will.
The Trump administration’s actions represent executive overreach since the Department of Homeland Security has no authority to cancel a prior TPS extension and an “arbitrary and capricious” violation of the federal Administrative Procedure Act, according to the lawsuit.
Plaintiffs are asking the court to rule the cancellation of the TPS extension unlawful and unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment’s due-process clause, to allow the Venezuelan immigrants’ protected status to be extended through October of 2026 and to provide an award of attorneys’ fees and costs to the plaintiffs.
The lawsuit also called Noem’s “dirtbags” statement evidence of racism in the administration’s decision-making.
“Making matters worse, that statement is just one among a torrent of similar racist statements that Secretary Noem, President Trump and members of the Trump campaign and administration have made to attack and marginalize nonwhite immigrants generally, and the Venezuelan TPS community in particular,” the lawsuit states.
Adelys Ferro, executive director of the Venezuelan American Caucus, said her organization supports the TPS holders in their legal efforts to block the TPS cancellation.
“We are expecting that our arguments are strong enough at least for the courts to protect them while the legal process goes forward,” Ferro told the Florida Record. “... If the decision goes against our plaintiffs and the judge says no, the decision from DHS stays in place. It's a very dark scenario for many TPS holders, who have been working and buying houses and are already business owners.”
She called the situation for the Venezuelan immigrants dire.
“Sadly, many of them feel betrayed” by the Trump administration, Ferro said, indicating that they thought candidate Donald Trump would do something good for Venezuela and take a tough stand against Maduro’s regime.