Venezuelans in Minnesota, targeted by Trump immigration orders, will see legal status expire
Johann Teran is among the Venezuelans living in Minnesota who is likely to see his legal status expire. Photo by Madison McVan/Minnesota Reformer.
When Johann Teran's plane touched down in Miami in May, the clock started ticking.
Teran, a lawyer from Barquisimeto, Venezuela, would be allowed to work in the U.S. for two years after the date of his arrival under a Biden administration initiative called humanitarian parole for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Nearly 8 million Venezuelans have left their home country in recent years, fleeing the nation's collapsed economy, repressive government and widespread crime.
After a short stint in Florida, Teran moved to Minneapolis and found work as a legal assistant at a downtown law firm. His wife stayed behind in Venezuela, waiting to hear if her application for humanitarian parole would also be accepted.
It won't. On his first day in office, President Donald Trump ordered the immediate termination of Biden-era humanitarian parole initiatives.
And, on Feb. 1, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem canceled Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans, which provides Venezuelan nationals already in the U.S. with work permits and protection from deportation.
Venezuelans are just one of the immigrant groups targeted by Trump in his first week of office, as the president makes good on his campaign promises to ramp up deportations and slow the entry of immigrants into the country.
Now, faced with the end of their deportation protections and work permissions, Venezuelan immigrants will have to choose one of the following options: return to their home country, still reeling from economic collapse and plagued by political violence and organized crime; find another country to seek refuge in; pursue other avenues to legal status in the U.S., which are often difficult to qualify for; or remain in the country without authorization.
Temporary Protected Status for one group of Venezuelans expires in April; another round is set to expire in September, and is unlikely to be renewed.
While it's difficult to get an accurate count of the number of Venezuelans who have relocated to Minnesota in recent years, it's clear that the population has grown significantly.
More than 117,000 Venezuelans have immigrated to the U.S. via humanitarian parole since the initiation of the program in 2023, and at least 344,000 Venezuelans are protected from deportation by TPS. (Some people qualify for both humanitarian parole and TPS.)
Luciano Carrero is president of Casa de Venezuela Minnesota, a nonprofit organization that advocates for Venezuelans. He's been fielding questions from community members attempting to understand what the revocation of humanitarian parole and TPS means.
Carrero and his colleagues at Casa de Venezuela sent a letter to U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer this week pleading with him to find a legislative solution that would allow Venezuelans to stay in the U.S.
Venezuelans protected by TPS always knew that the status was temporary and could be revoked, Carrero said. To immigrate and live in the U.S. under TPS was a 'calculated risk,' he said in Spanish.
Temporary Protected Status is extended to people from countries where ongoing conflicts, environmental disasters or other extenuating circumstances make a country unsafe to return to.
The situation in Venezuela has devolved in the last year, said Guillermo Gorrín, a Venezuelan-born political scientist and human rights expert living in Minnesota.
In July, a sham election sparked massive protests and a violent crackdown by the regime of Nicolás Maduro.
'They're persecuting everyone,' Gorrín said, even children and innocent bystanders.
The move to end deportation protections could backfire on Trump. Gorrín pointed out that Trump is giving Maduro leverage — Maduro could refuse deportation flights in exchange for concessions on tariffs, oil licenses and the loosening of economic sanctions.
Last week, however, Trump said Maduro's government agreed to accept all deportees, including members of the highly publicized Tren del Aragua gang.
Kicking out lots of immigrants could also damage the American economy: Undocumented immigrants alone paid $97 billion in taxes in 2022, including $34 billion towards social services that undocumented people do not qualify for. Mass deportations — if executed to the extent Trump has promised — would exacerbate the workforce shortage and lead to an estimated GDP loss of 4-7%, on par with the Great Recession.
Teran said he plans to stay for as long as his humanitarian parole lasts — until 2026, according to his papers — while pursuing other avenues for legal status. He hopes to also find a legal path for his wife to join him, he said.
He moved to the Twin Cities because he heard there were better job opportunities and support for immigrants than what was available in Miami — and he's happy with the decision.
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Table 1 lays this out, using the most recent LCOE data from Lazard. Table 1. Most recent LCOE estimates for various electrical sources. With tax credits and based on a utility scale, solar PV + BESS and wind + BESS are cheaper than geothermal with tax credits, and much cheaper than gas-fired power, nuclear, and coal. If the Mega Bill handicaps wind and solar in the race, electrical costs will zoom upwards. Second, the Bill seems to be unaware of green energy success in Australia. In the state of South Australia renewables plus batteries have been providing 72% of grid electricity continuously for three years, and this is expected to rise to 100% by 2027. Solar, wind, and batteries have proven the stability and reliability of renewables commercially. The first grid-scale BESS was started in 2017 by Elon Musk in South Australia, and BESS are expanding rapidly in the U.S. as well as in Australia. Intermittent power is no longer a reason to dismiss renewables, despite what the Energy Secretary says, because BESS have solved this problem and electricity from solar and wind renewables with BESS is dispatchable. Third, the Bill assumes new investments in old energy (coal, natural gas, and nuclear) will be embraced by the U.S. population. However, global spending on low-carbon power has doubled in the past five years. Solar PV is the leader in this space, with investments that will reach $450 billion in 2025. Coal is too dirty when it burns, and in the U.S. the market share has dropped from 50% in 2011 to 11% in 2024. Natural gas burns cleaner than coal, but the market for new gas-fired power plants has dropped out in the past two years, due to cost and delays in permitting and supply chains. The cost of new nuclear reactors, whether traditional reactors or SMRs, is substantially higher than renewable energies (Table 1). There is also the ubiquitous threat of being exposed to nuclear radiation, either from nuclear accidents or from underground storage of nuclear waste. It has been reported that U.S. nuclear reactors that were decommissioned some time ago can be recommissioned, but at a heavy cost of around $1 billion per unit. Fourth, the Bill enables China to forge ahead with a green energy economy, while the U.S. goes backward. Energy from solar, wind, and batteries is cheap, and has a short new-build time. It will continue to provide jobs and grow the economy, and benefits include lower electricity prices and less pollution. A key advantage is already-commercialized power for data centers that will enable the U.S. to compete with China in the race for AI. The handicap and setbacks of a thriving clean industry in the U.S. would be China's gain. Fifth, the Bill will force job losses by handicapping green industries. If projects in the above list of seven in Figure 1 were to be canceled due to the Mega Bill handicaps, there could be serious job losses. To illustrate by results in 2024, one report quotes $80 billion invested in clean power in 2024, which supported 1.4 million jobs in the U.S. Another answer is that current tax credits would enable strong economic growth by 2035: almost $2 trillion of monetary growth and almost 14 million jobs. This amounts to a return on the federal investment by four-times. The green energy benefits and financial returns of wind and solar with battery storage apply to both Republican and Democratic states in the U.S.. But so do the losses, if Congress decides to handicap wind and solar renewables. The biggest losses may be soaring electricity costs in the U.S., and the U.S. bending to China's clean energy boom of surging solar and BESS projects that will reliably service their AI data center programs.
