Photo of the Venezuelan flag by Jorge Paparoni, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
Venezuelan Temporary Protected Status (TPS) will not return on November 6 after all — at least for now. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed course and granted the Trump administration a 14-day administrative stay, pausing the court order that would have restored TPS for Venezuelans in the United States.
The reversal, reported by Bloomberg Law on November 3 and Law360 the same day, upends the position taken just days earlier. On October 30, the same court had refused to block the restoration, leaving TPS on track to return on November 6. That earlier outcome was the basis for this blog's October 31 post, "Venezuelan TPS Set to Return on November 6 After Appeals Court Rejects Trump Stay Bid." That post stands — this is an update to it, not a replacement.
What the Ninth Circuit decided on November 3
On Tuesday, November 3, the three-judge panel granted the administration a 14-day administrative stay, according to Bloomberg Law. The stay begins on Friday, November 6 — the same day the Supreme Court's earlier stay expires. The timing matters: without the new stay, the restoration order would have taken effect as the Supreme Court's stay ran out. With it, the status quo is frozen for another two weeks.
The stay pauses an order from District Judge Edward Chen. In a September 5, 2025 ruling, Judge Chen found that then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had exceeded her authority in ending Venezuela's TPS designation. His order would have reinstated the protections. The Ninth Circuit's November 3 action does not overturn that ruling — it simply pauses its effect while the litigation continues.
What the 14-day pause means in practice
Bloomberg Law reported the stay as lasting 14 days. Counted from November 6, that runs to about November 20. The pause gives the government a window to seek relief from the Supreme Court before anyone's immigration status changes. Until that window closes or a higher court acts, Venezuelan TPS holders remain in the same legal position they were in before November 6 — the restoration does not go ahead, but the underlying termination has not been finally upheld either.
That distinction is important for the hundreds of thousands of people affected. An administrative stay is a temporary, procedural step. It does not decide whether the Department of Homeland Security acted lawfully when it moved to end TPS, and it does not end the case. The merits of the termination are still being litigated.
The case and the numbers behind it
The case is National TPS Alliance v. Mullin, No. 25-5724. At the heart of the dispute is the Department of Homeland Security's February 2025 termination notice. That notice counted 348,202 people registered under the 2023 Venezuela TPS designation alone — a measure of how many lives turn on the outcome of this litigation, even before any other designations are counted.
For now, the practical message for Venezuelan TPS holders is one of continued uncertainty. The November 6 date that had looked like a restoration day is now, instead, the first day of a two-week pause. What happens next depends on whether the government seeks Supreme Court intervention during that window, and on how the courts rule in the weeks that follow.
This blog will update this story again if the Supreme Court acts or the Ninth Circuit issues a further ruling before the stay expires.
Sources: Bloomberg Law; Law360.