The Trump administration has revoked an extension of deportation protections that the previous Biden administration granted to more than 600,000 Venezuelans already in the United States.
The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, on Tuesday rescinded an 18-month extension of the temporary protected status (TPS) program, which allows for people to temporarily stay in the US if they cannot return safely to their home country.
The federal program is available for people fleeing ongoing armed conflict, environmental disasters, or extraordinary and temporary conditions. The designation gives people the legal authority to be in the country, but does not provide a long-term path to US citizenship.
Former president Joe Biden’s homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, issued the extension earlier in January before Donald Trump took office, citing “the severe humanitarian emergency the country continues to face due to political and economic crises”.
Noem told Fox News: “Before he left town, Mayorkas signed an order that said for 18 months, they were going to extend protection to people on Temporary Protected Status, which meant they were going to be able to stay here and violate our laws for another 18 months.
“We stopped that.”
Noem’s rollback of the extension requires her to make a decision on protections expiring in April by Saturday or have them automatically renew for six months, according to the New York Times, citing a copy of the decision.
“By taking this action, Secretary Noem is throwing over 600,000 into a state of ongoing bureaucratic limbo,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told the paper.
“People will no longer have any certainty as to whether they can stay in the country legally through the end of the year.”
About a million immigrants from 17 countries are protected by the program, including people from Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Sudan and Lebanon.
Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, suggested during the election campaign that they would scale back the use of TPS and policies granting temporary status as they pursued a campaign pledge of mass deportations. During his first term in office, Trump tried to end most temporary protected status enrollment but was stymied by federal courts.
