On Monday the US Supreme Court permitted the Trump administration to revoke the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) granted to some 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants, permitting their immediate deportation.

In doing so, the Court reversed a San Francisco district judge’s order to block Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem’s orders from March of this year to remove TPS status for Venezuelans. 

TPS is intended to guarantee the prevention of deportation of immigrants to specific countries, particularly if those countries are facing humanitarian or environmental crises, such as a natural disaster, war or armed conflict. The Trump administration is also expected to revoke TPS protection for tens of thousands of Haitian immigrants. The revoking of TPS status is equivalent to a death warrant for migrants seeking asylum and protection from disasters, gang violence, crippling poverty, political persecution and war. 

The National TPS Alliance and eleven Venezuelan immigrants filed suit challenging the federal government’s unprecedented action. Ahilan Arulanantham, a University of California law professor who represents TPS holders in the case, told Reuters, “This is the largest single action stripping any group of non-citizens of immigration status in modern US history. That the Supreme Court authorized it in a two-paragraph order with no reasoning is truly shocking.”

“The humanitarian and economic impact of the Court’s decision will be felt immediately, and will reverberate for generations,” Arulanantham added.

Due to the emergency appeal by the Trump administration, the Supreme Court did not provide a reasoning for the ruling in their short response granting the stay of the order. Significantly, the order only noted the dissent of a single judge, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

TPS holder and mother of two Maria Rodriguez, 33, who lives in Orlando, Florida, told Reuters, “We’re defenseless, vulnerable,” adding, “We left Venezuela because we couldn’t make ends meet there. There was no work. ... We have no family left in Venezuela. It’s a true drama.”

The Trump administration is escalating the detention and disappearance of immigrants, visa holders, asylum seekers, green card holders, and even US citizens, promising to deport some one million people this year alone. In order to meet these vast figures, top policy adviser Stephen Miller made clear that the administration intends to defy Supreme Court rulings and use the National Guard to carry out mass deportations.

The Trump administration has brazenly defied a federal judge’s orders to deport Venezuelans to El Salvador’s prison camp run by the fascistic government of President Nayib Bukele. Venezuelans are the largest group of non-Salvadoran immigrants who have been deported to  the Center for Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) torture camp. According to the latest figures from April, of at least 278 people transferred to CECOT, 245 immigrants were Venezuelan and 33 were Salvadoran. 

Miller noted that the administration would have to enroll “state and local law enforcement nationwide in assisting in supporting the deportation effort.” Miller referenced the 287(g) program, a provision added to the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1996, which grants the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the ability to deputize state and local law enforcement to carry out immigration raids. 

While the move is entirely in line with the increasingly brutal attack on immigrants by the Trump Administration, the focus on Venezuelans is part of Washington’s geostrategic interests in Latin America, aimed at putting greater pressure on nations such as Venezuela with close economic ties to China, as part of the drive to war with Beijing. 

According to a White House directive from last month, any country that produces or buys Venezuelan oil directly or through third parties will face 25 percent tariffs on all goods imported into the United States.  The tariff war against China and Venezuela is directly bound up with the threat of military aggression.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted in March on X: “Any country that allows its companies to produce, extract, or export from Venezuela will be subject to new tariffs, and any companies will be subject to sanctions.” 

China is currently the largest purchaser of Venezuelan oil. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson responded that, “We urge the United States to cease its interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs and to abolish the unlawful unilateral sanctions on the country.” 

Due to the economic and energy reliance on China by Venezuela, as the WSWS explained, “The stated aim of the order is to ‘sever the financial lifelines’ to the government of President Nicolás Maduro to provoke its downfall.”

Washington has long sought to promote regime change in Venezuela, efforts which are supported by both the Democratic and Republican parties in an attempt to sever ties between Caracas and Beijing. In the months leading up to Biden’s departure from the White House, his administration strategized for regime change and the ousting of Nicolás Maduro, a campaign which has only intensified under Trump.

The vindictive orders against hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants are intended, in part, to destabilize the country, which the Trump administration hopes will bolster far-right forces in Venezuela with close ties to Washington. 

This includes María Corina Machado, among the far-right Venezuelan “opposition” forces. Mark Rubio named Machado as his selection for Time Magazine’s 2025, 100 Most Influential People of the year. 

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens argued in a January 2025 column titled, “Depose Maduro,” for a “US military intervention of the sort that in 1990 swiftly ended the regime of the Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega,” claiming that “American troops withdrew swiftly, and Panama has been a democracy ever since.” 

In that piece Stephens hailed Trump’s selection of Rubio for Secretary of State. Rubio has long called for a military invasion to oust Maduro, with Stephens noting, “Ending Maduro’s long reign of terror is a good way to start their administration—and send a signal to tyrants elsewhere that American patience with disorder and danger eventually runs out.”

Washington is both creating and worsening the current humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, which the deepening sanctions and tariffs will only exacerbate. Nearly one third of the population, or seven million Venezuelans, have already fled the country, and tens of thousands have died due to the social crisis, caused primarily by continued US sanctions.

The Democratic Party will do nothing to stop the brutal attacks on immigrants, with which it fundamentally agrees. The Democrats have already overwhelmingly supported Trump’s funding bill, which gives a green light to unprecedented cuts through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and unanimously confirmed the appointment of Rubio as Secretary of State with a 99–0 vote. 

Trump’s brutal and vindictive attacks against immigrants, including mass deportations, are aimed fundamentally at the working class as a whole. Opposition to the mass targeting of over 350,000 Venezuelans must therefore be part of a wider struggle against capitalism, war, inequality—the fight for socialism.