WASHINGTON (AP) — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Wednesday that the Trump administration has revoked a decision that would have protected roughly 600,000 people from Venezuela from deportation.
On “Fox and Friends,” Noem said that she reversed the decision made by her successor, Alejandro Mayorkas, in the waning days of the Biden administration that extended Temporary Protected Status.
“Before he left town, Mayorkas signed an order that said for 18 months they were going to extend this protection to people that are on temporary protected status, which meant that they were going to be able to stay here and violate our laws for another 18 months,” Noem said. “We stopped that.”
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The move goes into effect immediately. The six page notice from the DHS says that the decision from the Trump administration restores the status quo preceding the Biden administration decision to extend protections for Venezuelans until Oct. 2026. Now the TPS expiration goes back to the original date of April 2025.
The Biden administration previously extended the protections to more than 230,000 Salvadoreans, 103,000 Ukrainians and 1,900 Sudanese that are already living in the U.S. Noem did not say what would happen to them and the DHS notice only refers to Venezuelans.
The TPS designation gives people legal authority to be in the country but doesn’t provide a long-term path to citizenship. They are reliant on the government renewing their status when it expires. Critics have said that over time, the renewal of the protection status becomes automatic, regardless of what is happening in the person’s home country.
The policy change was first reported Tuesday by The New York Times.
Venezuelans who had the protection could now be subject to removal from the country, though the U.S. doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Venezuela, limiting deportation options. Other countries that do not receive deportees include Cuba and Nicaragua, but Noem said that President Donald Trump “clearly will exercise all the authority and power that he has to make these countries take them back.”
Congress created TPS in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters or civil strife, giving people authorization to work in increments of up to 18 months at a time.
About 1 million immigrants from 17 countries are protected by TPS, including people from Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Sudan, Ukraine and Lebanon. Venezuelans are one of the largest beneficiaries, and the extension authorized by the Biden administration would have allowed them to stay from April 2025 to Oct. 2, 2026.
TPS faces an uncertain future under Trump, who tried to sharply curtail its use during his first term. Federal regulations would allow the extensions to be terminated early, though that’s rarely been done.
