Latest news with #temporaryprotectedstatus
Washington Post
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Venezuelan workers at Disney put on leave from jobs after losing protective status
ORLANDO, Fla. — Almost four dozen Venezuelan workers who had temporary protected status have been put on leave by Disney after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to strip them of legal protections. The move was made to make sure that the employees were not in violation of the law, Disney said in a statement Friday.
The Guardian
20-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
What is temporary protected status and who is affected by Trump's crackdown?
Millions of people live legally in the United States under various forms of temporary legal protection. Many have been targeted in the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. The latest move has been against people who have what's known as 'temporary protected status' (TPS), which grants people the right to stay in the US legally due to extraordinary circumstances in one's home country such as war or environmental catastrophe. The Trump administration has in recent weeks announced its plan to end TPS for Haitians, Venezuelans, Afghans and Cameroonians. The move may force more than 9,000 Afghan refugees to move back to the country now ruled by the Taliban. The administration also is ending the designation for roughly half a million Haitians in August. Here's what to know about TPS and some other temporary protections for immigrants: Temporary protected status allows people already living in the United States to stay and work legally for up to 18 months if their homelands are unsafe because of civil unrest or natural disasters. The Biden administration dramatically expanded the designation. It covers people from more than a dozen countries, though the largest numbers come from Venezuela and Haiti. The status does not put immigrants on a long-term path to citizenship and can be repeatedly renewed. Critics say renewal has become effectively automatic for many immigrants, no matter what is happening in their home countries. According to the American Immigration Council, ending TPS designations would lead to a significant economic loss for the US. The non-profit found that TPS households in the country earned more than $10bn in total income in 2021, and paid nearly $1.3bn in federal taxes. On Monday, the supreme court allowed the administration to end protections that had allowed some 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants to remain in the United States. Many Venezuelans were first granted TPS in 2021 by the Biden administration, allowing those who were already in the US to apply for protection from deportation and gain work authorization. Then, in 2023, the Biden administration issued an additional TPS designation for Venezuelans, and in January – just before Trump took office – extended those protections through October 2026. The Trump administration officials had ordered TPS to expire for those Venezuelans in April. The supreme court's decision lifted a federal judge's ruling that had paused the administration's plans, meaning TPS holders are now at risk of losing their protections and could face deportation. More than 500,000 people from what are sometimes called the CHNV countries – Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela – live in the US under the legal tool known as humanitarian parole, which allows people to enter the US temporarily, on the basis that they have an urgent humanitarian need like a medical emergency. This category, however, is also under threat by the Trump administration. In late March, the Trump administration announced plans to terminate humanitarian parole for approximately 530,000 Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Cubans and Haitians. In April, a federal judge issued a temporary order barring the elimination of the humanitarian parole program. But last week, the administration took the issue to the supreme court, asking it to allow it to end parole for immigrants from those four countries. The emergency appeal said a lower-court order had wrongly encroached on the authority of the Department of Homeland Security. US administrations – both Republican and Democratic – have used parole for decades for people unable to use regular immigration channels, whether because of time pressure or bad relations between their country and the US. The case now returns to the lower courts. For the California-based federal court, the next hearing is on 29 May. For the Massachusetts case, no hearings are scheduled and attorneys are working on a briefing for the motion to dismiss filed by the government, according to WGBH, a member station of National Public Radio in Massachusetts. The appeals court hearing will be the week of 11 July.
Washington Post
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Supreme Court allows Trump to cancel protected status for Venezuelans
The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to cancel temporary protections that have allowed nearly 350,000 Venezuelans to remain in the United States for humanitarian reasons. Trump officials had asked the justices to lift a lower-court order that barred the administration from ending the temporary protected status while litigation over the matter continues. The Biden administration created the protected status for Venezuelans in 2021 and 2023, finding that economic and political turmoil under the regime of President Nicolás Maduro made it too risky to deport migrants back to their home country. Officials approved a third extension of TPS in the waning days of Joe Biden's presidency that would have kept the protections in place through October 2026, but the Trump administration said the program was not in the 'national interest.' The homeland security secretary can designate immigrant groups for protected status if natural disasters, armed conflict or other extraordinary — but temporary — conditions raise fears for migrants' safety if they are returned to their homelands. The program is intended to end when conditions improve. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem rescinded the Biden extension in February, before it took effect, alleging that the Venezuelans were a strain on local resources and, since some were accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang, represented a public safety threat. Without the Biden extension, the protections were set to end for some migrants in April and others in September. 'The harm here is particularly pronounced because the Secretary determined that an 18-month extension would harm the United States' 'national security' and 'public safety,' while also straining police stations, city shelters, and aid services in local communities that had reached a breaking point,' the government wrote in its filings with the high court. In February, seven Venezuelan migrants and a nonprofit organization sued the Trump administration to block the termination of protected status for Venezuelans. A federal judge in Northern California paused President Donald Trump's action, ruling that the cancellation of protected status violated procedural rules and was probably sparked by racial animus. '[T]he Secretary's action threatens to: inflict irreparable harm on hundreds of thousands of persons whose lives, families, and livelihoods will be severely disrupted, cost the United States billions in economic activity, and injure public health and safety in communities throughout the United States,' the judge wrote in his opinion, which was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. 'At the same time, the government has failed to identify any real countervailing harm in continuing TPS for Venezuelan beneficiaries.' The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene.n. The migrants and nonprofit organization argue in their filings that Venezuela is still unsafe and the cancellation of the TPS program was motivated by bias. 'The Secretary explicitly relied on false, negative stereotypes — like the myth that Venezuela emptied its prisons to send migrants here — to justify both the vacatur and termination decisions,' the petitioners wrote. 'Her statements conflated Venezuelan TPS holders with 'dirt bags,' gang members, and dangerous criminals.' Earlier this month, the Trump administration asked the high court to clear the way for it to deport more than 530,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who have been allowed to stay in the United States while asylum and removal proceedings play out. This is a developing story. It will be updated.
