When Donald Trump first took office in 2017, the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program was a mess. The Obama administration had designated 10 countries for TPS, which means that armed conflict, natural disaster, or “extraordinary and temporary conditions" made it impossible for some refugees to return to their home country. Aliens with TPS are generally not removable and can obtain work authorization.
Trump immediately revoked TPS for refugees from six of those countries, where conditions that led to the TPS designation no longer existed.
When Trump left office, there were around 10,000 refugees claiming protected status. In four years under Joe Biden, the TPS program once again expanded to 10 nations, and the number of refugees protected under the program exploded to 3.5 million.
The Biden administration totally and illegally misused TPS to create a loophole in immigration law to allow millions of unvetted, undocumented aliens into the country who were protected from deportation.
I guess it was OK when Biden executed a massive executive power grab to bring millions of illegals into the U.S. but when Trump tried to exercise executive authority to get control of government, suddenly it's a constitutional crisis.
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The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) says of TPS, “The Secretary of Homeland Security [formerly the Attorney General] may designate a foreign country for TPS due to conditions in the country that temporarily prevent the country’s nationals from returning safely, or in certain circumstances, where the country is unable to handle the return of its nationals adequately.”
The key word here is "temporarily." When Trump removed TPS from six nations in 2017, the number of refugees fell to almost nothing. When Biden took office, he restored TPS to those six countries — except he forgot one, tiny step.
Biden officials failed to provide "evidence that conditions met the statutory requirements," according to the America First Policy Institute (AFPI). Furthermore, there were four other ways the administration acted unlawfully with regard to TPS:
Step 2: They unlawfully began categorically paroling in illegal aliens from countries like Afghanistan, Haiti, Venezuela, and Ukraine.
Step 3: They laundered the parole status, which is temporary and easy to terminate, of these illegal aliens by granting TPS with stated reasons that do not meet the statutory requirements.
Step 4: They unlawfully “redesignated” TPS countries every 18 months, which means they changed the cutoff date for eligibility to cover newly arrived illegal aliens from those countries. This alone has caused the total TPS population to increase by over 1 million illegal aliens.
Step 5: They granted TPS to 6 new countries, again citing reasons that do not appear to meet the statutory requirements for a designation.
Venezuelans are particularly unhappy. Their protected status was supposed to last until October 2026. Instead, it appears that TPS will end for them by April. The Trump administration is claiming that the conditions that led to the original TPS designation are no longer valid.
Venezuela remains in a political crisis. After Maduro claimed to have won the presidential election in July 2024, he has strengthened his repressive grip over Venezuelans. Maduro has targeted and arrested leaders, activists and supporters aligned with the opposition. Confrontations between Venezuelans and the military have rocked the country.
Trump envoy Richard Grennell visited Venezuela last week and returned with six American detainees. Trump said a deal had been reached to accept deportations, while Maduro called the meeting a “first step,” Reuters reported. But federal lawmakers stress the most important step would be to remove Maduro.
Almost 800,000 Venezuelans are currently enjoying protected status in the United States. A law that was supposed to give limited numbers of refugees a temporary safe haven has become just another Democratic ploy to open the borders for permanent illegal aliens.
In addition to 800,000 Venezuelans, there are 628,000 Haitians, 262,000 from El Salvador, 193,000 from Ukraine, and more than 1.5 million from 12 other countries, all in the U.S. under the TPS program.
Trump would do well to bring some sanity back to this program.
