Posted on February 3, 2025

Trump Administration Revokes Protections for Venezuelans in the U.S.

Hamed Aleaziz and Maggie Haberman, New York Times, February 2, 2025

The Trump administration has revoked Temporary Protected Status, or T.P.S., for more than 300,000 Venezuelans in the United States, leaving the population vulnerable to potential deportation in the coming months, according to government documents obtained by The New York Times.

The move, President Trump’s first to remove such protections in his second term, signals that he plans to continue a crackdown on the program that began in his first administration, when he sought to terminate the status for migrants from Sudan, El Salvador and Haiti, among others. He was stymied by federal courts that took issue with the way he undid the protections.

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This time, the administration has decided to make the changes more immediate. Those under T.P.S. from Venezuela who received the protections in 2023 will lose their temporary status 60 days after the government publishes the termination notice. Republican critics of the program have said that it has been used to allow migrants to stay much longer than intended and that it has transformed from something temporary to a more permanent arrangement.

The notice indicates that more than 300,000 Venezuelans had T.P.S. through April.

Another group of more than 250,000 Venezuelans have protections through September and for now will not be affected, but the decision suggests that they and others under T.P.S. could be in danger of losing their status in the future.

The termination also increases the number of people without any formal immigration status in the United States as Mr. Trump tries to carry out a mass deportation effort. {snip}

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