Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans in the United States is on track to come back into force on November 6, after a federal appeals court on Friday, October 30 refused to keep a lower-court order protecting them on hold. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied the federal government's request for a stay in National TPS Alliance v. Mullin, which means that, unless the Supreme Court steps in during the next few days, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who lost TPS in 2025 will have their lawful status reinstated while the underlying case continues.

Source: ACLU of Northern California

The decision came in a one-page order filed on October 30 by a three-judge panel made up of Judges Kim McLane Wardlaw, Salvador Mendoza Jr. and Anthony D. Johnstone, in case No. 25-5724. The government had asked for two things: a stay pending appeal that would begin the moment the Supreme Court's own stay expires on November 6, and, failing that, an administrative stay of at least 21 days. The panel denied both requests without giving reasons, and said it would set an expedited schedule to hear the appeal on its merits by a separate order.

Source: Bloomberg Law

What changes on November 6

Temporary Protected Status, known as TPS, shields people from deportation and allows them to work legally in the United States while their home country is designated as unsafe to return to. The Ninth Circuit ruling does not itself hand anyone a new document. What it does is clear the way for a district court order issued on September 5, 2025 to take effect when the Supreme Court's stay of that order expires on November 6, the day the Supreme Court's mandate issues. Bloomberg Law reported the practical result the same way: deportation protections will be renewed for Venezuelans in the US on November 6, after the appellate court ruled against the administration.

Source: Bloomberg Law

That September 2025 district court order was issued by U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco. Judge Chen found that former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem exceeded her authority when she issued orders vacating a TPS extension that had already been granted to Venezuela and instead terminating the country's designation. The National TPS Alliance and individual Venezuelan TPS holders had sued the Department of Homeland Security on February 19, 2025, challenging both the vacatur of the extension and the termination that followed it.

How Venezuela's TPS was taken away

Venezuela was first designated for TPS in March 2021, and a second, broader designation followed in October 2023. In January 2025, in the final days of the previous administration, the Department of Homeland Security extended Venezuela's TPS for another 18 months, through October 2, 2026. Incoming Secretary Kristi Noem then vacated that extension. A DHS notice published in the Federal Register on February 5, 2025 (90 FR 9040) terminated the October 2023 designation effective April 7, 2025, and estimated that 348,202 people were registered under the 2023 designation alone. Plaintiffs' counsel Jessica Bansal of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network said the termination stripped over half a million people of lawful immigration status.

Source: Immigration Analytics, citing DHS Federal Register notice 90 FR 9040

Venezuelan holders kept winning in the lower courts and kept losing their status anyway, because of emergency orders from the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court blocked an earlier order by Judge Chen in May 2025, and on October 3, 2025 it stayed his September ruling as well, in an unreasoned order issued on its emergency, or shadow, docket. While that stay was in force, the termination took effect: the 2021 designation ended on November 7, 2025, and work permits under the 2023 designation expired on October 2, 2026 for all but a narrow group covered by an earlier court carve-out.

The Supreme Court ruling that hangs over the case

The legal ground shifted again this year. On June 25, 2026, the Supreme Court decided Mullin v. Doe by 6-3, holding that the TPS statute, 8 U.S.C. 1254a(b)(5)(A), bars judicial review of non-constitutional claims against the Secretary's designation, extension and termination decisions. On October 5, 2026, the Supreme Court 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 Mullin v. Doe deprived federal courts of jurisdiction to review the plaintiffs' challenge at all. The TPS holders countered that courts retain authority to consider whether the Secretary's Venezuela orders exceeded her authority under the statute. Friday's one-page order does not say which of those arguments the panel accepted, or whether it simply found that the government had not met the demanding standard for a stay pending appeal.

Source: Immigration Analytics

The human cost claimed in the case is set out in declarations from TPS holders that were before the Ninth Circuit, according to the ACLU of Northern California, which represents the plaintiffs together with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, the UCLA Minana Family Center for Immigration Law and Policy and the Haitian Bridge Alliance. In one declaration, Carlos Sanchez Villa said he was deported to Liberia after losing TPS, a country he said he had no prior connection to. In another, Rita di Peri Castellano said officials deported her to Mexico, where she was put on a bus and left on a street in a city near the Guatemala border with no shelter or assistance. The ACLU statement said thousands of Venezuelan TPS holders have been detained or deported since the Supreme Court stay took effect, and some have been separated from their U.S. citizen children. These are the plaintiffs' accounts and allegations, presented in court filings, not findings made by the appeals court in Friday's order.

What readers still do not know

Friday's order does not say which documents will be valid on November 6 or how restored holders will prove their status to employers. Those details will depend on how the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services implement the district court order, which in earlier rounds of TPS litigation has been done through notices on the USCIS website. Employers completing or re-verifying Form I-9 for Venezuelan workers will be watching for that guidance, and workers whose permits expired on October 2 should not assume any single document is accepted until USCIS publishes its instructions. This report is general information about a court order, not legal advice for any individual case.

The case is also one front in a much wider wind-down of TPS. A Congressional Research Service tally cited in coverage of the program counted 13 of 17 TPS countries terminated as of October 22, 2026. For this site's readers, the Venezuela fight matters beyond one community: the same legal question, whether courts can review a TPS termination at all after Mullin v. Doe, will shape what happens to other designation countries whose holders live and work across the United States, including in trucking, warehousing, care work and construction.

What happens next

The government now has one route left before November 6: an emergency application to the Supreme Court, which has sided with the administration at both earlier emergency stages of this case and whose June ruling gives it a sharper jurisdictional argument than it had in 2025. If the justices do not act, the district court order takes effect on November 6 and TPS is reinstated while the litigation continues. Separately, the Ninth Circuit will set an expedited briefing schedule for the appeal on the merits, which will decide the longer-term fate of the challenge. Jose Palma, coordinator of the National TPS Alliance, said after the ruling: 'In the face of this administration's brutal assault, today's victory renews our strength to fight for the rights won by previous generations of immigrants: to be able to live and work without fear in the place we call home.'

Source: ACLU of Northern California