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The Trump administration has stepped up its attack on Venezuelans living in the US under temporary deportation protections, revoking the right to stay of more than 300,000 people.
The move, first reported by the New York Times, comes as a one-two punch for Venezuelans who were already reeling from last week’s decision to rescind an 18-month extension of temporary protected status (TPS) that had been introduced in the final days of the out-going Biden administration. Reversing the extension was a blow that affected more than 600,000 Venezuelans living in the US.
Now Trump has targeted a subset of that Venezuelan immigrant community who entered the TPS program in 2023, obtaining the right to remain in the US until at least April. Having revoked their protections, the Trump administration is giving that group of more than 300,000 Venezuelans just 60 days before they become vulnerable to deportation.
A further 250,000 Venezuelans who arrived in 2021 have TPS protections until September. Their position beyond that date must now be considered to be in severe jeopardy.
TPS is a federal program designed to offer temporary shelter to those fleeing natural disasters or armed conflict. It offers a right to live in the US but without a longer term path to citizenship.
In the case of Venezuela, the program offered a lifeline for hundreds of thousands escaping political and economic hardship under the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro.
The double blow of two successive cuts to the TPS program for Venezuelans has prompted cries of dismay from both Venezuela and the US. The Venezuelan opposition website El Pitazo said that the revoking of the Biden administration’s 18-month extension “fell like an atomic bomb over this migrant community”.
Andres Oppenheimer, writing in the Miami Herald, noted that Trump’s move against Venezuelans targeted “some of his most ardent supporters in the US – both voters and TPS-holders. Buoyed by Trump and Florida legislators’ hard-line rhetoric against Venezuela’s dictatorship, Venezuela’s exile community had overwhelmingly supported Trump in the 2024 US elections.”
Trump has long had TPS in his sights. In his first presidential term, he scrapped its protections for immigrants from El Salvador and Haiti.
On Sunday, the homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, sporting a cowboy hat, appeared on NBC News’s Meet the Press to justify rescinding the protections. Misreferencing the program as “TPP”, she said it no longer had credibility.
Noem parroted a line frequently used by Trump on the campaign trail, that the Venezuelan government had opened its prisons and mental health institutions and sent the occupants to the US.
She also said that “folks from Venezuela who have come into this country are members of TDA”. Tren de Aragua is a Venezuelan crime network.
The Department of Homeland Security has identified 600 migrants in the US who may have connections to the gang – a tiny fraction of the 600,000 with TPS status.
