The Trump administration Wednesday cut back deportation protections given to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans handed out by President Joe Biden just days before he left office.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) revoked an 18-month extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) granted to roughly 600,000 Venezuelan nationals earlier in January under the previous administration, according to a DHS memo obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The decision comes as the Trump White House continues on with its hawkish immigration enforcement agenda.
TPS provides certain deportation protections and work eligibility to those who receive its designation, including those unlawfully in the U.S. Over the years, various administrations have designated TPS for foreign nationals living stateside whose home countries are experiencing any number of situations that may make it dangerous for them to return, such as an ongoing military conflict or natural disaster.
Venezuelans have flocked to the U.S. en masse in recent years, largely fleeing economic instability under socialist President Nicolas Maduro. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan nationals were encountered by Border Patrol and other immigration officials during the Biden administration, according to Customs and Border Protection.
Among those fleeing also include members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan prison gang that has established a presence in numerous states across the U.S. Tren de Aragua gangbangers have been accused of deadly shootings, home invasions and even taking control of entire apartment complexes.
Biden granted TPS to Venezuelans in 2021 and again in 2023. On Jan 10, just days before Donald Trump was to be sworn back into office, Biden’s DHS extended TPS for both groups of Venezuelan TPS holders, allowing roughly all 600,000 of them to keep their protected status until October 2026.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem appeared to chide her predecessor, former DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, for seemingly combining both groups of Venezuelan TPS holders in the extension decree. “The Mayorkas notice adopted a novel approach of implicitly negating the 2021 Venezuelan TPS designation by effectively subsuming it within the 2023 Venezuela TPS designation,” Noem wrote in the DHS memo. “The Mayorkas notice did not acknowledge the novelty of its approach or explain how it is consistent with the TPS statute.”
The Trump administration’s revocation means that Venezuelans who received TPS status in 2021 will keep their deportation protections until September and those who received it in 2023 will see their status end in April — unless Noem chooses to issue her own extension.
It’s possible Trump’s DHS will cut back other last-minute TPS extensions Biden made before he left office. The Biden administration in January extended TPS for roughly 300,000 other foreign nationals, including Salvadoran, Ukrainian and Sudanese nationals.
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