The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to freeze a lower court's order and allow the government to end deportation protections for 300,000 Venezuelans protected by Temporary Protected Status (TPS) Department said the Supreme Court should stay a federal judge's September ruling that the government improperly ended a program that allowed migrants to temporarily live and work in the United States because of living conditions back home.

The White House already scored a high court victory in the case. In May, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end the TPS program for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, freezing an earlier decision by Chen. Earlier this month, Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco issued his final ruling against the administration. Chen and the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit declined to stay that ruling while the administration appeals it. The Justice Department said lower courts are ignoring the higher court's prior intervention, a move it called “indefensible.”