Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro celebrates after partial results were announced by the electoral council, in Caracas, Venezuela in 2024. EPA-EFE/Ronald Pena R.
Feb. 2 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has revoked deportation protections for 300,000 Venezuelans in the United States, most of whom have been living in the country under Temporary Protected Status, and many of whom have applied for asylum.
The story was first reported by The New York Times after journalists analyzed government documents regarding the TPS program.
The move comes less than a week after the Trump administration rescinded an 18-month extension of temporary protected status for 600,000 Venezuelans, which was announced on Joe Biden’s last day as president.
Trump’s order gives this specific group of Venezuelans, who entered the TPS program in 2023, just 60 days to leave the United States or face deportation.
An additional 250,000 Venezuelans who were granted temporary protection status in 2021 have been granted permission to stay until September, though it is not clear if Trump will revoke that status, as well.
Trump took similar actions during his first term and sought to end temporary protection status for Haitian and El Salvador immigrants, a move that was blocked by courts for the way Trump went about it.
Venezuelans living in the United States under the TPS program have said they came to the U.S. fleeing political and economic hardships imposed by President Nicolas Maduro.
Homeland Security Secretary Krisiti Noem, wearing a cowboy hat, appeared on NBC News’s Meet the Press and said “TPP,” which she mis-referenced, no longer had credibility. She also claimed that “folks from Venezuela who have come into this country are members of TDA.” Tren de Aragua is a Venezuelan crime network. She offered no evidence to back up her claims.
The Department of Homeland Security has identified roughly 600 Venezuelans who have ties to the group, out of the 600,000 who are in the country.
This is the latest in a series of moves for the Trump administration, which has promised a hard and fast “massive deportation” during the early months of Trump’s administration.
Ohio Republican Senator J.D. Vance said prior to the election TPS had been misused and turned into a program that allowed migrants to stay permanently, rather than for its original purpose, which was to escape Maduro’s oppression.
“We’re going to stop doing mass grants of Temporary Protected Status,” Vance said in October.
Immigrants rights advocates criticized Trump’s move Sunday, and called it “plainly illegal.”
“The T.P.S. statute makes clear that terminations can only occur at the end of an extension; it does not permit do-overs,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, a co-leader of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the U.C.L.A. School of Law.
Ending TPS for Venezuelans will also boost the number of people in the United States with no immigration status as Trump continues to make good on his often repeated campaign promise to rid the country of illegal immigrants.