A federal appeals court on Friday unanimously upheld a judge’s ruling that postpones the termination of deportation protections under Temporary Protected Status for over half-a-million Venezuelans while litigation is ongoing.

In a 52-page decision, a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the Department of Homeland Security lacked statutory authority to end a TPS extension before it runs out. It found such action violated the explicit timelines Congress wrote under the 1990 legislation that created TPS.

“We hold that Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claim that the vacatur of a prior extension of TPS is not permitted by the governing statutory framework,” the Court stated. “In enacting the TPS statute, Congress designed a system of

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