He was living in the US when the Biden administration announced that Venezuela would be offered Temporary Protected Status, which allows people already in the United States to stay and work legally if their homeland is deemed unsafe. People from 17 countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan and Lebanon, are currently receiving the aid.
But President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have promised mass deportations and suggested canceling the use of TPS that includes more than 1 million immigrants. He highlighted the baseless claim that Haitians who legally live and work in Springfield, Ohio, because TPS holders eat their neighbors’ pets. Trump also expanded on claims disputed by the mayor of Aurora, Colorado, about Venezuelan gangs taking over an apartment complex.
“What Donald Trump is proposing is that we’re going to stop doing mass parole,” Vance said at an Arizona rally in October, citing a separate immigration status called humanitarian parole that is also at risk. “We will stop doing mass grants of Temporary Protected Status.”
Hidalgo wept as she discussed her plight with reporters as her son, now 2, slept in a stroller outside the New York migrant hotel where they were staying. At least 7.7 million people have fled political violence and economic turmoil in Venezuela in one of the largest displacements worldwide.
“My only hope is TPS,” Hidalgo said. “My worry, for example, is that after everything I suffered with my son so that I could go to this country, they send me back.” Venezuelans along with Haitians and Salvadorans are the largest group of TPS beneficiaries and have the largest share. Haiti’s international airport shut down this week after a gang opened fire on a commercial plane landing in Port-Au-Prince when the new interim prime minister swore in the Federal Aviation Administration to block US Airlines from landing there for 30 days.
“It creates a lot of anxiety,” said Vania Andre, editor-in-chief for 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 deal with widespread gang violence and cannot absorb all these people.”
Appointments by the secretary of Homeland Security offer relief for up to 18 months but are extended in many cases. The designation for El Salvador ended in March. The designations for Sudan, Ukraine, and Venezuela ended in April. Others expire later.
Federal regulations say the designation can be terminated before it expires, but that has never happened, and requires 60 days’ notice.
TPS is similar to the little-known Deferred Departure Enforcement Program that Trump used to reward Venezuelan exile supporters as his first presidency ended, shielding 145,000 from deportation over 18 months.
Attorney General Ahilan T. Arulanantham, who successfully challenged Trump’s previous efforts to allow TPS designations for some states to expire, has no doubt that the president-elect will try again.
“It’s possible that some people in his government will realize that eliminating the right to work for more than a million people, many of whom have lived in this country for decades, is not a good policy” and economically dangerous, said Arulanantham, who teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, and helps direct the Center for Immigration Law and Policy. “But nothing in Trump’s history suggests that he would care about that consideration.”
The court blocked the designations from expiring for Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua and El Salvador until President Joe Biden is in office. Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas then renewed.
Arulanantham said he “absolutely” could see another legal challenge, depending on what the Trump administration does.
Congress established TPS in 1990, when civil war was raging in El Salvador. Members were shocked to learn that some Salvadorans were tortured and executed after being deported from the US. in 1995 and 1997.
Designation is not a path to permanent residence or US citizenship, but applicants can try to change their status through other immigration processes.
Advocates are pushing the White House to designate new polling stations for Nicaraguans before Biden leaves office. Fewer than 3,000 are still protected by the temporary shelter that was issued in 1998 after Hurricane Mitch hit the country. Those who fled later because of repression from President Daniel Ortega’s government did not receive the same protection from deportation.
“This is a moral obligation” for the Biden administration, said Maria Bilbao, of the American Friends Service Committee.
Elena, a 46-year-old Nicaraguan who has lived in the United States illegally for 25 years, hopes Biden will hurry.
“They have to do it now,” said Elena, who lives in Florida and insisted only her first name be used because she fears deportation. “Not in January. Not in December. Now.”
