Markwayne Mullin Reminds Jake Tapper What The ‘T’ In ‘TPS’ Means

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin clashed Sunday with “State of the Union” host Jake Tapper over Temporary Protected Status for Haitian and Syrian migrants.

The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration in a 6-3 decision Thursday, allowing the Department of Homeland Security to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) as it applied to migrants from Haiti and Syria. Tapper asked Mullin if that meant over 350,000 people from those countries would be deported.

“irst of all, Temporary Protective Status was never intended to be permanent,” Mullin told Tapper. “And there’s a lot of people that came over here 15, 20 years ago underneath TPS that’s already changed their status. The whole time these individuals have been here underneath the Temporary Protected Status, they could have applied for a visa. They could have applied for LPR . They could have applied for different directions. But the status itself can be ended in its name itself by saying ‘Temporary.’”

WATCH:

“So, these individuals have a couple of choices: they can try to apply for a permanent residence here, they can apply for a temporary visa if they choose to, or they can choose to go back,” Mullin continued. “And if they want to go back, we will help them with that.”

President George H.W. Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990 into law, creating TPS in November 1990. TPS was intended for situations involving war or natural disasters where the home countries of illegal immigrants were considered too dangerous for deportation, according to the United States Citizenship and