“Secretary Noem’s unlawful actions to strip approximately 607,000 Venezuelans in the United States of their work permits and immigration status under temporary protected status … ignore the statutory scheme that Congress enacted and instead threaten to force lawfully admitted and TPS-eligible Venezuelans and their families to return to a country experiencing one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the Western Hemisphere,” the pro-migrant groups say in the federal lawsuit.

Attorneys with the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and Cleary Gottlieb are representing plaintiffs CASA and Make the Road New York in the case filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for Maryland.

Another group of Venezuelan TPS recipients filed a similar lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Norther California on Wednesday.

In the Maryland case, plaintiff CASA describes itself as a national immigrant advocacy group with 173,000 members while plaintiff MRNY is a Brooklyn-based pro-immigrant organization.

They say TPS status is established by law and only can be terminated at the end of the designated period or a 60-day notice period.

“The purpose of those restrictions is to provide for the predictability of a fixed period of time and an orderly transition for those who are lawfully present in the United States with TPS,” CASA and MRNY argue.

“DHS also is statutorily required to consult with other U.S. government agencies before making or amending a TPS determination.”

The two plaintiff organizations say DHS officials in 2021 recognized “extraordinary conditions in Venezuela” made it dangerous for Venezuelans to return to the nation and allowed them to stay on temporary protected status.

“Venezuela’s economy had collapsed. The country’s healthcare system had failed. Basic services, such as running water and electricity crumbled,” CASA and MRNY say. “Under Nicolas Maduro‘s regime, human rights protections deteriorated, leaving citizens vulnerable to the threat of violence from both Maduro’s security forces and criminal gangs.”

DHS officials repeatedly have affirmed those conditions persist in Venezuela and President Joe Biden in an executive order in January extended the TPS protection another 18 months.

DHS officials and Noem on Jan. 28 vacated the extension, which the plaintiffs say Noem justified by saying, “The people of this country want these dirtbags out.”

One of the individuals in the California case told the Washington Post she came to the United States with her family in 2017 and applied for asylum, but the application is still pending.

“Families like mine came to this country looking for a safer future,” said Gonzalez Herrera, 25. “We’re hardworking people. The only crime we committed was aiming for a better life.”

Noem said Biden extended TPS protection for Venezuelans and others to “tie our hands,” but DHS will “follow the process [and] evaluate all of these individuals that are in our country, including the Venezuelans that are here.”

The plaintiffs want the federal court to declare as unlawful Noem’s reversal of TPS protection for Venezuelan migrants and affirm the TPS status is in effect until Oct. 2, 2026. They also seek attorneys’ fees and legal costs.

Noem and DHS officials have not commented on the federal lawsuit filed on behalf of Venezuelan migrants but on Thursday rescinded Biden’s extension of TPS for Haitian migrants.

“Biden and [former DHS Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas attempted to tie the hands of the Trump administration by extending Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status by 18 months — far longer than justified or necessary,” DHS officials said in a news release.

“We are returning integrity to the TPS system, which has been abused and exploited by illegal aliens for decades. President Trump and Secretary Noem are returning TPS to its original status: temporary.”