Photo: Marincyclist, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. File photo of a federal courthouse in San Francisco, not a photo of Friday's ruling.
Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in the United States could regain Temporary Protected Status (TPS) on November 6, after a federal appeals court on Friday refused the Trump administration's request to keep a lower-court order on hold — unless the Supreme Court intervenes first.
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit — Judges Kim McLane Wardlaw, Salvador Mendoza Jr. and Anthony D. Johnstone — denied the government's request for a stay pending appeal in a one-page order filed on October 30, and also denied an administrative stay of at least 21 days. The panel said it would set an expedited schedule to hear the appeal on the merits.
Temporary Protected Status shields people from deportation and lets them work while their home country is designated as unsafe to return to. For Venezuelans whose status was cut off in 2025, the next few days will decide whether they wake up on November 6 with lawful status again or remain removable while the case grinds on.
What the court refused to do
The ruling concerns a district court order issued on September 5, 2025, in National TPS Alliance v. Mullin, in which US District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco found that former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem exceeded her authority when she vacated a TPS extension granted to Venezuela and instead terminated the country's designation.
That order had been subject to a stay issued by the US Supreme Court on October 3, 2025. That stay is set to expire on Friday, November 6, when the Supreme Court's mandate issues, according to the Ninth Circuit order and reporting of it. The Ninth Circuit's refusal to impose a new stay therefore means that, absent further intervention by the Supreme Court, the district court order — and with it, TPS protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans stripped of the status — would take effect again on November 6 while litigation over the termination continues.
The panel gave no reasons for denying the stay, so the order does not reveal whether the judges think some of the plaintiffs' claims survive the Supreme Court's June 2026 ruling, or simply concluded that the government had not met the demanding standard for a stay pending appeal, as Immigration Analytics noted in its analysis of the order.
A long, tangled legal history
The fight dates to early 2025, when Noem undid a January 2025 extension of Venezuela's TPS and terminated the 2023 designation. A Department of Homeland Security notice dated February 5, 2025, set that termination for April 7, 2025, and estimated that 348,202 people were registered under the 2023 designation alone.
Judge Chen ruled on September 5, 2025, that Noem exceeded her authority, according to the ACLU of Northern California, which represents the National TPS Alliance and individual holders alongside other groups. The Supreme Court stayed that ruling on October 3, 2025, after having blocked an earlier Chen order in May 2025.
Then, on June 25, 2026, the Supreme Court decided Mullin v. Doe by 6-3, holding that the TPS statute bars judicial review of non-constitutional claims against the Secretary's designation, extension and termination decisions. On October 5, it vacated the Ninth Circuit's earlier decision in the Venezuela case and sent it back for another look in light of that ruling.
At the Ninth Circuit, the government argued that the June 2026 ruling deprived federal courts of jurisdiction to review the plaintiffs' challenge. The plaintiffs are represented by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the ACLU Foundations of Northern California and Southern California, the UCLA Minana Family Center for Immigration Law and Policy, and Haitian Bridge Alliance.
What happens next — and what is still unclear
The most likely next move is an emergency application to the Supreme Court before November 6, since the justices are the government's last stop before that date. Bloomberg Law reported that protections "will be renewed for Venezuelans in the US on Nov. 6" after the appellate ruling — but that outcome depends on the Supreme Court not stepping in again.
Practical questions also remain unanswered. The Ninth Circuit's order does not say which documents will be valid or how holders prove restored status to employers. In past rounds of TPS litigation, those details have come through notices on the US Citizenship and Immigration Services website, and implementation will depend on how the Department of Homeland Security and USCIS carry out the lower-court order.
For now, the ruling is a significant, if conditional, reprieve: hundreds of thousands of people who lost TPS in 2025 are on track to have it back within a week — unless the Supreme Court acts first.
Sources: Bloomberg Law; ACLU of Northern California / National TPS Alliance; Ninth Circuit order in National TPS Alliance v. Mullin, No. 25-5724 (30 Oct 2026) via Immigration Analytics; US Supreme Court, Mullin v. Doe, 609 U.S. 324 (25 June 2026).