Joe Biden handed out hundreds of thousands of amnesty free passes to illegal aliens on his way out the door.
Donald Trump moved to end them. A San Francisco judge and the Ninth Circuit dug in their heels for the better part of two years.
But the Supreme Court opened its new term with one order that left the open-borders lawyers with almost nothing left to fight about.
A One-Paragraph Order That Ended a Two-Year Standoff
On October 5, 2026, the first day of its new term, the US Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s petition in Mullin v. National TPS Alliance and threw out a Ninth Circuit ruling that blocked the end of Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans.
The order runs about as long as a grocery list. “Petition GRANTED. Judgment VACATED and case REMANDED,” the docket reads.
Lawyers call this a GVR, short for grant, vacate, and remand. The justices didn’t rule on the merits. They told the Ninth Circuit to take another look in light of a June decision that changed the whole ballgame.
And not a single justice objected. The order list shows no noted dissent.
Here’s the part that tells you where this is headed. The TPS holders’ own lawyers told the Court on August 20 that they would not oppose the government’s request, according to The Rio Times. When the other side quits swinging, the fight is close to over.
How “Temporary” Turned Into a Court War
TPS lets foreign nationals live and work in the US when their home country faces war or disaster. The law allows designations of up to 18 months at a time. The word “temporary” sits right there in the name.
Biden’s DHS first put Venezuela on the list in March 2021, then added a second designation in October 2023. DHS counted about 268,000 people under the 2021 designation and roughly 348,000 under the 2023 one. The department tallied those groups at different times, so the numbers don’t stack into one clean total.
Then, in January 2025, with days left in office, the Biden administration stretched the protection all the way to October 2, 2026.
Then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem didn’t wait around. She vacated that extension and terminated the 2023 designation on February 5, 2025. The administration’s notice pointed to lower hyperinflation and higher oil output in Venezuela, along with a finding that continuing the program ran against the national interest.
But US District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco blocked her. In September 2025, he set aside both the vacatur and the termination.
The Supreme Court paused his rulings twice, once in May 2025 and again in October 2025. Both terminations took effect. DHS ended the 2021 designation separately, effective November 7, 2025, according to the Federal Register.
And still the Ninth Circuit wouldn’t let it go. On January 28, 2026, a panel upheld Chen and declared that Noem had no power to undo the Biden extension.
The June Decision That Shut the Courthouse Door
Everything shifted on June 25, 2026. In Mullin v. Doe, a case involving Haitian and Syrian TPS holders, a 6-3 majority held that the TPS statute bars courts from hearing non-constitutional challenges to the Secretary’s TPS decisions.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority. On the law’s ban on judicial review, he wrote, “This text is clear, and its plain meaning is very broad.”
That case now carries the name of Markwayne Mullin, the current Secretary of Homeland Security. The Solicitor General asked the justices in July to apply the same logic to Venezuela. The October 5 order did exactly that.
Congress Wrote the Rules and the Judges Ignored Them
Strip away the Latin and the lesson is plain. Congress handed the TPS call to the executive branch, and Congress told the courts to keep their hands off. A district judge and an appeals panel spent years acting as if that language didn’t exist.
That’s the part that should bother folks most. Nobody needed a law degree to read a statute that the Supreme Court now describes as clear. But two layers of federal judges in San Francisco looked at it and decided the elected President still couldn’t do what the law plainly allowed.
Voters weren’t confused about any of this. A Reuters/Ipsos poll from February 2026 found 61% of Americans support deporting people in the country illegally, including 92% of Republicans and 35% of Democrats, as reported by The Daily Signal. A Cygnal survey of likely 2026 voters, taken January 27-28, 2026, found the same 61% backing removal, against just 34% opposed, according to The Federalist.
And Venezuela itself has changed. US forces seized Nicolas Maduro on January 3, 2026, and he now faces trial in Manhattan, with a date set for June 1, 2027, according to The Rio Times. The crisis Biden’s team cited back in 2021 doesn’t look much like the country that exists today.
Washington has a long habit of treating “temporary” as a polite suggestion. One extension leads to another, then another, and before long anyone who wants to enforce the original deadline gets painted as heartless. This case could have gone that way. It didn’t, at least not yet.
The Next Front Is Already Taking Shape
The fight isn’t fully finished. The TPS holders raised an equal-protection claim, which is constitutional and falls outside the review ban. The Doe majority found a similar Haiti claim unlikely to succeed, so that argument looks like a long shot, though the Ninth Circuit gets the next swing at it.
Some former holders may still try other routes. USCIS says holding TPS paused the one-year clock for asylum claims, so a number of them can still file.
But watch Capitol Hill. Several bills would let some TPS holders apply for permanent residence, according to The Rio Times, though none had become law when the Congressional Research Service reviewed them in July. Call those bills what they are: amnesty, dressed up in humanitarian language, for people whose protection the law always described as temporary.
That’s the pattern. When the courts run out of road, the push moves to Congress. The open-borders lobby lost this round in the courtroom, and its allies will almost certainly try to win it back with a vote.
Biden’s people built this program to outlast him. The Supreme Court made sure the word “temporary” still means something.
Sources:
“Supreme Court Allows Trump to Deport 300,000 Venezuelans,” Breitbart
“Supreme Court Voids Ruling Shielding Venezuelans in US,” The Rio Times
“Justices Vacate 9th Circ Ruling On Noem’s TPS Authority,” Law360
“US Supreme Court Orders Reconsideration of TPS Case for Venezuelan and Haitian Nationals,” Envoy Global
“Judge blocks administration from revoking protected status for small subset of Venezuelans,” Associated Press (as cited by Yahoo News)
“Most Americans Back Trump’s Deportation Goals, Reuters/Ipsos Poll Finds,” The Daily Signal
“Poll: Likely 2026 Midterm Voters Support Deporting Illegal Aliens By 2:1 Margin,” The Federalist