1 million immigrants in US rely on temporary protections Trump could target

NEW YORK — Maribel Hidalgo fled her native Venezuela with her 1-year-old son a year ago; He passed through Panama’s Darien Gap for days, then used rails to reach the United States via Mexico.

They were living in the United States when the Biden administration announced that Venezuelans would be offered Temporary Protected Status, which allows people already in the United States to legally stay and work if their home country is deemed unsafe. People from 17 countries currently benefit from such assistance, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan and, more recently, Lebanon.

But President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, have vowed mass deportations and suggested they would reduce the use of TPS, which covers more than 1 million immigrants. They highlighted false claims that Haitians living and working legally in Springfield, Ohio, as TPS holders, were eating their neighbors’ pets. Trump also amplified controversial claims by the mayor of Aurora, Colorado, that Venezuelan gangs had taken over an apartment complex.

“What Donald Trump was proposing to do was that we stop mass parole,” Vance said at a rally in Arizona in October, mentioning that a separate immigration status called humanitarian parole was also at risk. “We will stop giving lump sum grants to Temporary Protection Status.”

Hidalgo cried as she discussed her situation with a reporter while her son, now 2, slept in a stroller outside the New York immigration hotel where they lived. At least 7.7 million people in Venezuela have fled political violence and economic turmoil, one of the largest displacements worldwide.

“My only hope was TPS,” Hidalgo said. “For example, my concern is that they will send me back after everything I went through with my son to come to this country.”

Venezuelans, along with Haitians and Salvadorans, constitute the largest group of TPS beneficiaries and are most at risk.

Haiti’s international airport was closed this week after gangs opened fire on a commercial plane that landed in Port-Au-Prince as the new interim prime minister was sworn in. The Federal Aviation Administration banned US airlines from landing there for 30 days.

“This creates a lot of concern,” said Vania André, editor-in-chief of The Haitian Times, an online newspaper that covers the Haitian diaspora. “Sending thousands of people back to Haiti is not an option. The country is not equipped to do that.” .He’s already dealing with rampant gang violence and can’t absorb all these people.”

Appointments made by the Homeland Security secretary provide relief for a period of up to 18 months, but in most cases this period is extended. El Salvador’s designation expires in March. Appointments for Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela expire in April. Others end later.

Federal regulations say an appointment can be terminated before its term expires, but that never happened and requires 60 days’ notice.

TPS is similar to the lesser-known Deferred Sentencing Release Program, which Trump used to reward exiled Venezuelan supporters as his first presidency drew to a close, protecting 145,000 people from deportation for 18 months.

Attorney Ahilan T. Arulanantham, who successfully challenged Trump’s previous efforts to allow TPS designations for various countries to expire, has no doubt the president-elect will try again.

“It is possible that some in the administration may realize that revoking the employment permits of more than a million people, many of whom have lived in this country for decades, is not good policy and is economically disastrous,” said Arulanantham, who teaches at the university. from the Los Angeles School of Law, California, and helps direct the Center for Immigration Law and Policy “But there’s nothing in Trump’s history to suggest they would care about those kinds of issues.”

Courts have blocked appointments from expiring for Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua and El Salvador until President Joe Biden’s term. Interior Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas later renewed them.

Arulanantham said he could “absolutely” face another legal challenge depending on what the Trump administration does.

Congress established TPS in 1990, as civil war raged in El Salvador. Members were alarmed to learn that some Salvadorans had been tortured and executed after being deported from the United States. Other names protected people during wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kuwait, after genocidal violence in Rwanda, and after volcanic eruptions in Montserrat, a British territory in the Caribbean. In 1995 and 1997.

Designation is not a path to U.S. permanent residence or citizenship, but applicants may attempt to change their status through other immigration processes.

Advocates are pressing the White House to make a new TPS designation for Nicaraguans before Biden leaves office. Fewer than 3,000 are still covered by temporary protections put in place after Hurricane Mitch devastated the country in 1998. People who fled much later under pressure from President Daniel Ortega’s government do not enjoy the same protection from deportation.

Maria Bilbao of the American Friends Service Committee said “this is a moral obligation” for the Biden administration.

Elena, a 46-year-old Nicaraguan who has been living in the United States illegally for 25 years, hopes Biden acts quickly.

“He should do this now,” said Elena, who lives in Florida and insisted that only her first name be used because she fears deportation. “Not in January. Not in December. Now.”

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Snow reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writer Gisela Salomon in Miami contributed to this report.