Latest news with #OhioImmigrantAlliance
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Columbus ICE Out! demonstration brings anti-Trump protesters Downtown
Between 200 and 300 people gathered in downtown Columbus June 10 to protest the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration, show support for the city's immigrant communities, and to express solidarity with protesters in Los Angeles. Several pro-immigrant and left-leaning groups organized the "ICE Out!" protest, which took place June 10 at Columbus City Hall on West Broad Street. The Ohio Immigrant Alliance, 50501, the Party for Socialism and Liberation Columbus, the La Raza Movement and the Columbus Democratic Socialists of America organized the demonstration. Scores of protesters holding signs denouncing the Trump administration and showing support for immigrant communities were in attendance as organizers gave speeches and led pro-immigration, anti-Trump chants and slogans. Other protesters waved Palestinian flags and donned the traditional keffiyehs or held upside-down American flags, which is used as a signal of distress. Rene Levino, 69, of Pataskala, told The Dispatch that he attended the protest because as a Vietnam veteran, he felt obligated to continue to protect the country from what he called a "form of dictatorship." "I'll do whatever it takes to stand up for my country," said Levino, donning a black Vietnam veteran cap. "I just want our country back, and I want (Trump) to follow the law." James McCullough, 22, of Columbus, said that it was hypocritical that the United States relies on immigrant labor but at the same time is trying to have undocumented immigrants deported. McCullough also noted the plight that migrants from African countries face, such as Senegalese and Sudanese migrants. "(Immigration) is another race issue," said McCullough. The demonstration was entirely peaceful. After leaders led chants and gave speeches at Columbus City Hall for an hour, protesters walked onto Broad Street and marched eastbound before turning north onto High Street while still chanting. Columbus police officers, including officers from the division's dialogue team, largely stayed on the periphery of the crowd while temporarily shutting down street intersections so protesters could safely march through. The protesters marched past Columbus police headquarters as they continued back onto West Broad Street in front of Columbus City Hall. Protesters then dispersed without incident. Columbus City Council member Lourdes Barroso de Padilla said on June 9 that she would attend the protest, but The Dispatch could not immediately determine if she was in attendance. Columbus' ICE Out! protest was a sharp contrast to pictures and videos coming out of Los Angeles. Protests and outright riots have broken out in L.A. in response to ICE agents conducting immigration raids and arresting immigrants at businesses in the city. The protests there hit a boiling point on June 7, as masked protesters stormed city streets, hurling slabs of concrete, Molotov cocktails and other items at heavily armed and masked agents and law enforcement officers. Videos taken by both residents and protesters show rioters blocking highway traffic, facing off with law enforcement agencies and setting fire to Waymo self-driving cars. Law enforcement agencies deployed tear gas to disperse protesters and one officer was captured on video shooting an Australian reporter with a rubber bullet. A New York Post photographer was shot in the head with a rubber bullet by another officer on June 9. In an effort to quell the protests, President Donald Trump deployed a total of 4,000 National Guard troops and a Marine unit consisting of 700 soldiers from Camp Pendleton. Trump's actions drew rebuke from California's leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has filed an emergency lawsuit against the Trump administration, accusing Trump and other officials from his administration of violating the Constitution and "trampling over" Newsom's authority. 'Donald Trump is creating fear and terror by failing to adhere to the U.S. Constitution and overstepping his authority. This is a manufactured crisis to allow him to take over a state militia, damaging the very foundation of our republic,' Newsom said in a prepared statement. Trump recently stated that he wants an additional 20,000 National Guard troops deployed to LA. The deployment of National Guard troops and the Marine battalion is expected to cost around $134 million, according to reporting from USA TODAY. The addition of 20,000 National Guard troops would cost around $3.6 billion. Several "No Kings" protests are scheduled in central Ohio in defiance of the large military parade Trump is holding in Washington, D.C. to commemorate the Army's 250th birthday on June 14, which is also President Trump's birthday. On June 10, Trump said he expected protesters to try and ruin the parade and warned that they would be met with "very big force." Central Ohio protests scheduled include: An Indivisible Central Ohio No Kings protest from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. during the Stonewall Columbus Pride March A No Kings Hilliard protest at Warehouse 839 from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. A No Kings Clintonville protest at the intersection of North Broadway and Indianola Avenue from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. A No Kings: National Day of Action protest at Westerville City Hall from 3 to 4 p.m. A No Kings Grove City protest from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. A No Kings Pickerington protest at the intersection of State Route 256 and Refugee Road from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. A No Kings Delaware protest at Delaware City Hall from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. A No Kings London protest at the Madison County Courthouse from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Reporter Shahid Meighan can be reached at smeighan@ at ShahidMeighan on X, and at on Bluesky. This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus protest opposes Trump, support LA demonstrations
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ohio immigrant advocates blast Trump travel ban
Activists protest the agenda of President Donald Trump during a rally near the water tower on the Magnificent Mile on Jan. 25, 2025, in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by) As protesters clash with law enforcement in Los Angeles over one aspect of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, advocates are slamming another in Ohio — a travel ban for people from 12 countries that took effect on Monday. The ban, announced just last Wednesday, is so sweeping that Lynn Tramonte of Ohio Immigrant Alliance labeled it 'the new Muslim and African ban.' 'This is racism by presidential decree,' she said in a written statement. 'The new Muslim and African ban is here, with a Caribbean and Asian annex.' Trump's order attempts to 'fully restrict and limit the entry of nationals of the following 12 countries: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.' In addition, it 'partially' restricts the entry of people from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela. But that's a distinction without a difference, Tramonte said. Trump's executive order says of immigration from those places, 'consular officers shall reduce the validity for any other nonimmigrant visa issued to nationals… to the extent permitted by law.' That's 'a 'partial' ban that is just as extensive' as the complete bans, Tramonte said. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX In Ohio, Trump and some Republicans have a problematic history when it comes to the state's sizable Haitian population. Last summer, Trump, now-Vice President J.D. Vance and some state Republicans amplified the racist lie that Haitians in Springfield were stealing their neighbors' pets and eating them. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, however, defended that community and criticized those who were baselessly attacking it. Before last week's ban, leaders of Ohio's Haitian community said people were terrified because the lies about them made them a target — and because Trump canceled the temporary protected status of 500,000 Haitians, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. All face difficult conditions in their home countries, but the situation in Haiti is particularly dire. Its last elected president was assassinated four years ago and the country has since fallen into chaos and gang violence. On Monday, the New York Times reported on another way Trump's latest order stands to harm Haitians. Brad Mertens Joseph, age 6, was to travel from Haiti to Akron Children's Hospital for a heart surgery he needs to live past 30. Because of Trump's travel ban, it was abruptly canceled along with medical procedures for hundreds of other Haitian children with serious medical conditions, the paper reported. Tramonte said it's time to stop pushing immigrants from troubled countries from one place to another. 'How many times do people from Haiti, the Congo, Cameroon, and Afghanistan have to save their own lives in order to find a safe place to call home?' she asked. 'How many countries do they have to turn to before one lets them stop moving and settle in? These are some of the strongest, bravest, and smartest people I have ever known. They want to live in Ohio and are doing great things here. Ohio needs them. We would benefit from embracing them and their family members, and helping them put down permanent roots, not making them feel scared and telling them to leave.'
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Advocate: Ohio's county jails are no place for migrants
Activists protest the agenda of President Donald Trump during a rally near the water tower on the Magnificent Mile on Jan. 25, 2025, in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by) Five county lockups and a private jail in Ohio have signed contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to house migrants the agency detains as part of President Donald Trump's effort at mass deportations. An advocate for immigrants said it's a bad idea to house them in facilities built for people accused of committing crimes. Trump ran on false claims that migrants commit high rates of crime and on promises that he would deport millions. But mass deportations are a lot harder than Trump made it sound. And his administration is reclassifying people who came legally and asking help from local law enforcement as it tries to live up to his promises. One way it's done that is by signing contracts with sheriffs to house detainees in county jails. So far in Ohio, ICE has contracted with Seneca, Mahoning, Butler, and Geauga counties, said Lynn Tramonte of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. It has also contracted with Corrections Center of Northwest Ohio, a multi-county jail, and Northeast Ohio Correctional Center, a private prison in Youngstown, she said. Trump might act as if it's a crime to be in the United States without documents, but it's not, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. 'The act of being present in the United States in violation of the immigration laws is not, standing alone, a crime,' it said in an issue brief. 'While federal immigration law does criminalize some actions that may be related to undocumented presence in the United States, undocumented presence alone is not a violation of federal criminal law. Thus, many believe that the term 'illegal alien,' which may suggest a criminal violation, is inaccurate or misleading.' What is a crime is illegal entry — coming into the country without declaring it to authorities. 'Entering the United States without being inspected and admitted, i.e., illegal entry, is a misdemeanor or can be a felony, depending on the circumstances,' the ACLU said. 'But many undocumented immigrants do not enter the United States illegally. They enter legally but overstay, work without authorization, drop out of school or violate the conditions of their visas in some other way. Current estimates are that approximately 45% of undocumented immigrants did not enter illegally.' Trump is trying to deport many of those people, in addition to trying to revoke protections of those who came legally under temporary protected status, or by using the CBP 1 app. Tramonte said county slammers are not the place to hold migrants. 'We are literally putting people who are not charged with crimes in a criminal jail,' she said in an email. She listed what she believes are some of the harms: 'Taking them away from their families, jobs, and communities, making them rot in jail, while their immigration cases are pending. Making it harder for them to work with lawyers and win their cases. In the United States, you can be eligible for deportation and legal status at the same time. It's up to the courts to figure out which way to go.' Several Ohio counties contracted with ICE to house migrants during the first Trump administration. There were some problems. Detainees complained of mistreatment by jail staff. And at one point, the jail in Morrow County had a 100% covid infection rate. Tramonte warned that taxpayers were on the hook to defend the lawsuits that were filed during the first Trump administration and likely would be again. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The way people think immigration works and the way it really does
File photo of a 2018 protest against the Trump administration's immigration policies. Photo byWith roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, people are understandably frustrated. The presence of so many people with no official status raises obvious questions. Why don't more of them get right with the law or go just back home? And why didn't they just get in line, wait their turn, and immigrate the right way in the first place? However, experts say such questions are based on misconceptions about how the immigration system currently works in the United States. They say the reality instead is an antiquated, broken system that actually serves to keep millions from ever becoming documented. That forces the undocumented to stay in the shadows in a way that perversely serves the ends of human traffickers, drug cartels and other criminal organizations — the people we wanted to be protected from in the first place. Focusing only on deportations without undertaking more basic reforms will only make the problem worse, said Heather Prendergast, a Cleveland-based immigration lawyer. 'We can't just have enforcement,' she said. 'People are going to keep coming. If you don't have a way to open the faucet a little bit to relieve some of that pressure, they're going to find other ways. That's not good for any of us. That's what benefits the gangs and the cartels and the criminal element. We want to bring people out of the shadows.' Lynn Tramonte, founder of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, had a recent experience indicating that even people with direct experience with the U.S. immigration system can be misinformed about how it works. 'One Friday I had two different conversations with two different Lyft drivers — pretty deep conversations about immigration,' she said. 'One was a Croatian immigrant himself and one is the father-in-law of a man who won asylum from South Africa.' However, their ideas were based on decades-old information, and in both instances involved special programs. They were wrong about the current landscape, but that didn't mean their ideas weren't reasonable, Tramonte said. 'I just asked myself, 'Why don't we have the immigration system these Lyft drivers think we have?'' she said. The Lyft drivers are hardly alone, and the further American families are from an immigration experience, the more likely they are to have mistaken beliefs about how things work, said Celinda Lake, a Washington, D.C.-based Democratic pollster and political strategist. Some misconceptions are particularly common, she said. 'We recently did some work on people who receive citizenship through marriage,' Lake said. 'People believe firmly that if you marry a citizen, you become an American citizen. When we tried to talk to them about that, they said, 'Oh no. I saw the movie.' They said they saw the movie 'Green Card.'' Prendergast, the immigration attorney, said that sometimes the system does work that way, but only sometimes. For many others, it's all but impossible to get the permanent residency one gains with a Green Card, not to mention full citizenship, she said. 'If you have come here through the broken back door, for example, and you marry a U.S. citizen, you can't get your Green Card in America,' Prendergast said. 'You didn't come in the front door. You weren't inspected and admitted. You actually have to leave the United States and go to the consulate in your home country to apply for your visa.' That process comes with a 1990s-era poison pill in the form of a 10-year wait before anything can happen. 'When you leave America, thanks to the Clinton administration, if you've accrued time in the U.S. without legal status, you're subject to a 10-year bar,' Prendergast said. 'So that means leaving your family and your U.S. citizen spouse so you can go sit outside America for 10 years.' She said there are waivers for those who can demonstrate extreme hardship, but even those take years to adjudicate. So it's hard to see many undocumented people leaving their families and taking a bet on a process that at best will take years. Meanwhile, Lake, the pollster, said Americans overwhelmingly want the system to work like so many mistakenly think it does — marry a citizen, get a Green Card and have a path to citizenship. 'When we survey on whether that should happen, two-thirds to three quarters say. 'Yes. Absolutely. I thought it was the law now.'' Lake said. When many say the millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States just need to come 'the right way,' they envision an orderly process in which people can find the line and get in it. 'People don't understand why you can't just become a citizen,' Lake said. 'Why don't you just walk down to the post office and file the papers? Post office is literally where they think you'd file to get it.' Not only is the post office not the place that handles immigration matters, nothing about the system is that straightforward, Prendergast said. 'The thing about immigration is that it's super fact-specific,' she said. 'If you've seen one case, you've seen one case. You can't have these broad generalities.' Nowhere is this more true than with what Prendergast calls the 'mythical line.' There's not one line, but many, and which one you might find yourself in depends not only on why you think you should be able to come to the United States, but also the country you're coming from. 'There's no mythical line,' Predergast said. 'The line that people talk about — they say, 'They should wait in line like my family members had to — the way our grandparents came in.' But they didn't have these processes and procedures that we do now.' In fact, the many lines for noncitizens to get Green Cards are so complex that it takes a staff of government economists to keep track of them. Known as the Visa Bulletin, each month the State Department publishes when applicants for permanent residency have reached the front of their respective lines. There are no annual limits to the number of Green Cards that can be issued to the spouses, parents and minor children of U.S. citizens — so long as those family members didn't, as Predndergast said, come in 'through the broken back door.' But there are strict limits for everybody else. Other family-based visas are capped at 226,000 a year and employment-based visas are limited to 140,000. Because there are also per-country caps set by statute — and because more people want to come from some countries than they do from others — some of the lines stretch for decades. For example, if you're a married Mexican child of a U.S. citizen, you would have had to have gotten in the Green Card line on or before Nov. 22, 2000 to now be at the front of it. That's almost a quarter century ago. Those from China, India and the Philippines seeking family-based Green Cards can face waits nearly as long. Such seemingly arbitrary waits are also true for professionals seeking employment-based visas. Let's say you're the administrator of a rural hospital and you need an anesthesiologist. If you want to sponsor one from India, because of country limits that doctor would have to have gotten in line for a Green Card on or before Dec. 1, 2012, according to the March Visa Bulletin. It isn't likely that employers or employees can plan to fill vacancies in a hospital 12 years in advance. The convoluted system is a far cry from what most would consider sensible. 'It's not a real line,' Prendergast said. 'It's a mythical line and this is what it comes from. It comes from the Visa Bulletin. It's really confusing and we need economists to tell us whose turn it is, because there's a lot of math and whatever else economists do involved.' Lake said that her public opinion research shows strong support for undocumented people who come, work for a decade or more, abide by the laws] and pay taxes. Two such men from Mauritania were in Ohio when they were deported during the first Trump administration, with devastating consequences for them and their families. 'People don't think you can never become a citizen,' Lake said. 'They think that if you came over undocumented, there's amnesty. If you work here 20 years and pay taxes, there's amnesty, you can at least get a visa. They're very, very supportive of anybody who works 20 years and pays taxes. They support that they should be able to become citizens. It's 60-plus percent of the public that believes you should become a citizen under those circumstances. What's more American than working for 20 years and paying taxes?' But again, the reality is quite different. It just seems fair that after years of proving oneself and paying your way, you should be given a chance but you're unlikely to get one. Facetiously dubbing it 'the good guy visa,' Prendergast said that even people who take a dim view of immigration support a less-than-absolute policy. 'Some people may think they don't like immigrants, but they think 'my immigrant,' or 'my Mexican restaurant person, or my landscaper, he's a really good guy, so there should be an immigrant visa for him,'' she said. But regardless of whether migrants come in without documents or overstay visas, or run into one of many other snarls, they can face situations that are almost impossible to fix. 'When you have fallen out of legal status whether it's because you never had it to begin with — you came through that broken back window — or you came here on a visa but you didn't maintain it, you didn't go to class or you hired a lawyer to file something and they didn't file it — you've fallen out of status, and it's really hard to get right by the law,' Prendergast said. Not only are migrants and their families hurting because the immigration system doesn't work the way most Americans think it does, so are thousands of businesses, said Rebecca Shi, CEO of the American Business Immigration Coalition, a group of more than 1,700 businesses and executives. That can mean higher prices for consumers, in addition to other inconveniences. 'Right now we have 1.7 million open jobs, and we don't have enough people to fill them,' Shi said. 'The labor market is so tight. Our employers from small businesses to mom and pop restaurants and bakeries to large, multistate hotel operators can't fill positions. That has meant businesses are open only at certain hours. We have had some food processors that have had to really slow down their production. That slows down the supply chain and that means consumers may not get the products they want or that prices are going to go up.' Her group wants many of the things that Lake's opinion research indicates big majorities of Americans want — a path to citizenship for those who are here, keeping families together and clear, and predictable ways for people to come join the workforce. Despite their popularity, reforms keep not happening. Shi said that when Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden had Democratic congressional majorities early in their terms, neither gave immigration a high enough spot on their priority lists. In 2013, when a bipartisan coalition was close on a reform package, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, worked tirelessly to tank it and has complained about our broken immigration system ever since. Last year, another bipartisan package seemed near the finish line when then-candidate Donald Trump killed the right-leaning package. Then he ran a campaign in which he excoriated the country's troubled immigration system. That leaves people like Prendergast and all her clients to deal with what remains. 'The work I do as an immigration lawyer, I'm not helping people to come to America the wrong way,' she said. 'My job as an immigration lawyer is to help people who may already be here — or not — find a way to accomplish their immigration goals… I'm trying to help people to do things the right way. And there aren't a lot of tools to work with, and the tools that we have are old and rusty and sometimes don't fit today's equipment.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
27-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ohio AG and 17 others question protections for immigrants from dangerous home countries
Attorney FritzGerald Tondreau, who helps with immigration issues at Konbit Neg Lakay in Spring Valley, N.Y., shows intimidating videos of gang hostages and enemies being killed or beaten in Haiti. As a new wave of immigrants fleeing chaos arrives, many are moving beyond New York and Florida to find jobs and housing. (Photo by Tim Henderson/Stateline) Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and 17 other Republican attorneys general are questioning the temporary protected status for immigrants from 17 distressed countries. They're asking officials in President Donald Trump's explicitly anti-immigrant administration to review whether protections are necessary. In a statement Tuesday, Yost said some have been allowed to stay in the United States even after it was 'safe for them to return home.' However, he didn't name a single such country — and publicly available reports make it hard to guess which places he might mean. His office was asked if he could name a person with temporary protected status who could safely return to her or his home country. A spokeswoman responded that it wasn't the attorney general's job to make such determinations. An immigrant advocate said the letter was another way to scare vulnerable immigrants into the shadows. It's akin to last summer's false claims by now-President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and others that Haitians under temporary protected status in Springfield were stealing and eating their neighbors' pets, she said. That led to dozens of bomb threats and reports of violence against immigrants. 'It's about intimidation,' said Lynn Tramonte, founder of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. 'It's about destabilization. These are authoritarian tactics where you make people unsafe in their homes and communities. It's really sad. J.D. Vance himself brought violence to Springfield.' Yost and the other attorneys general sent a letter to Kristi Noem, Trump's head of the Department of Homeland Security. Now confirmed, Noem has the power to grant or revoke temporary protected status, or TPS. Her farewell address last week as North Dakota governor was peppered with starkly anti-immigrant rhetoric. The Trump administration is giving immigration officers an expanded authority to rapidly deport immigrants, including people the Biden administration temporarily allowed into the country under parole authority, according to an internal memo, States Newsroom reported this weekend. 'TPS beneficiaries represent over 1 million immigrants residing in the States who are otherwise without legal status,' the attorneys general's letter to Noem said. 'Converting TPS into a license for long-term residency frustrates congressional aims and only increases the financial and governmental strain on States.' In addition to Yost, attorneys general from Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming signed the letter to Noem. The letter makes much of the fact that the word 'temporary' is in the name of the designation, and that people from some countries have had temporary protected status for decades. 'Honduras, for instance, first received TPS after a hurricane hit in 1998 and DHS bases its current TPS designation on 'persist[ing]' conditions from that same event,' the letter said. 'TPS extensions spanning decades have become routine.' According to statutory language provided by Yost's office, the Homeland Security secretary can grant TPS if she finds 'that there exist extraordinary and temporary conditions in the foreign state that prevent aliens who are nationals of the state from returning to the state in safety.' Tramonte said the attorneys general are misreading the law. 'It's called 'temporary protected status,'' she said. 'It's not called 'short-term protected status.' When a crisis happens, whether it's a natural disaster or a political crisis, it takes years to recover. They're fixating on the word 'temporary' as if that means short-term. But all that means is that Congress said we're going to give you a break and not deport you because it's dangerous to send you back.' In its 2023 report on human rights practices, the U.S. State Department had this to say about Honduras, the country the Republican AGs cite as being designated a TPS country for almost 27 years: 'Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: arbitrary or unlawful killings; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by government agents; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom, including threats against media members by criminal elements; serious government corruption; extensive gender-based violence, including domestic violence, sexual violence, and femicide; and crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or intersex persons.' In fact, of the 17 countries designated for TPS, 11 have the State Department's most severe travel warning — do not travel. Three have the next-highest, reconsider travel. And three have the second-lowest, exercise increased caution. Reports for the latter countries — Cameroon, Nepal and El Salvador — indicate how dicey it might be to return there, especially if you're not a tourist from a developed country. Human Rights Watch's World Report 2024 says that El Salvador had been stricken by gang violence, and then 'a state of emergency (that was) adopted in March 2022 that suspended basic rights remains in force. Authorities have committed widespread human rights violations, including mass arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, ill-treatment in detention, and due process violations.' The Human Rights Watch report for Cameroon detailed 'continued clashes between armed groups and government forces throughout Cameroon's Anglophone and Far North regions severely impacted civilians, with cases of unlawful killings, abductions, and raids on villages increasing in the second half of the year.' And the State Department's 2023 report for Nepal described 'significant human rights issues (including) credible reports of: arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; arbitrary detention; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media, including violence or threats of violence against journalists and unjustified arrests of journalists.' Those are the TPS countries that the State Department deems to be the safest of the 17 to travel to. The letter the attorneys general wrote to Noem criticized former President Joe Biden for extending temporary protected status designations for Sudan, Ukraine, and Venezuela, in addition to El Salvador. Ukraine has been devastated by war since Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded in 2022. Sudan has been torn by civil war since 2023, spurring the enlistment of child soldiers, sexual violence and other atrocities. And in Venezuela, the socialist government has made the economy so dysfunctional that 90% live in poverty, and it has the highest crime rate in the world. In a statement announcing that he and other Republican attorneys general called for a review of TPS designations, Yost, said some could safely return to their home countries. 'This program has been applied too loosely, allowing noncitizens to live here indefinitely, even after it's safe for them to return home,' the statement quoted Yost, who last week announced a 2026 run for governor, as saying. Asked if the Ohio AG could name one, his spokeswoman said that wasn't his job. 'The Ohio Attorney General isn't the person with authority to make TPS judgments, regardless,' the spokeswoman, Bethany McCorkle, said in an email. 'That's why the letter doesn't call for the designation to be immediately lifted from any one nation. 'What the letter does ask is that the Secretary engage in a review of the country conditions and exercise her judgment regarding the status of countries that have been designated as 'temporar[ily]' protected for years — sometimes decades — based on the same insular events,' she added. 'If conditions are currently unsafe in a certain country based on new/current factors that would reach the high bar set by Congress for TPS, then the Secretary would have discretion to give TPS on that basis.' The call for an administration led by a vehemently anti-immigrant president to review and possibly deny immigrants' protected status might be out of step with public opinion. A December poll sponsored by the National Immigration Forum and the Bulfinch group said that 73% of Americans agreed that immigration policies should protect the persecuted and keep families intact. Tramonte, of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, said the real point of the letter is to distract the public from the real cause of many Americans' suffering. 'This gets them headlines, this gets them accolades from the people they're trying to stir up,' she said. 'They're trying to distract from their bigger agenda, which is getting corporations bigger tax breaks and helping the wealthy while average people are having to work multiple jobs just to pay the rent.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
