The Trump administration asked the US supreme court on Friday to intervene for the second time in a case involving its bid to end deportation protections the former president, Joe Biden, granted to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in the United States.

The justice department filed an emergency application asking the justices to lift a federal judge’s ruling that the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, lacked the authority to end the protections for Venezuelans under the temporary protected status, or TPS, program.

“So long as the district court’s order is in effect, the secretary must permit over 300,000 Venezuelan nationals to remain in the country, notwithstanding her reasoned determination that doing so even temporarily is ‘contrary to the national interest’,” the justice department said in its filing.

The supremecourt previously sided with the administration in May to lift a temporary order that US judge Edward Chen in San Francisco issued at an earlier stage of the case that had halted the TPS termination while the litigation played out in court.

Chen issued a final ruling in the case on 5 September finding that Noem’s actions to terminate the program violated a federal law that governs the actions of federal agencies.