1 Million Migrants at Risk as Trump Looks to End Temporary Protection Programs

New York: Maribel Hidalgo fled her native Venezuela a year ago with a 1-year-old son, trudging for days through Panama's Darien Gap, n riding rails across Mexico to United States.

Migrants Under Biden ministration

y were living in U.S. when Biden ministration announced Venezuelans would be offered Temporary Protected Status, which allows people alrey in United States to stay and work legally if ir homelands are deemed unsafe. People from 17 countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan and recently Lebanon , are currently receiving such relief.

Trump's Equation With Migrants

But President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have promised mass deportations and suggested y would scale back use of TPS that covers more than 1 million immigrants. y have highlighted unfounded claims that Haitians who live and work legally in Springfield, Ohio, as TPS holders were eating ir neighbors’ pets. Trump also amplified disputed claims me by mayor of Aurora, Coloro, about Venezuelan gangs taking over an apartment complex .

“What Donald Trump has proposed doing is we’re going to stop doing mass parole,” Vance said at an Arizona rally in October, mentioning a separate immigration status called humanitarian parole that is also at risk. “We’re going to stop doing mass grants of Temporary Protected Status.”

Hidalgo wept as she discussed her plight with a reporter as her son, now 2, slept in a stroller outside New York migrant hotel where y live. At least 7.7 million people have fled political violence and economic turmoil in Venezuela in one of biggest displacements worldwide.

“My only hope was TPS,” Hidalgo said. “My worry, for example, is that after everything I suffered with my son so that I could make it to this country, that y send me back again.”

Millions of Migrants at Risk

Venezuelans along with Haitians and Salvorans are largest group of TPS beneficiaries and have most at stake.

Haiti's international airport shut down this week after gangs opened fire at a commercial flight landing in Port-Au-Prince while a new interim prime minister was sworn in. Federal Aviation ministration barred U.S. airlines from landing re for 30 days.

“It's creating a lot of anxiety," said Vania André, editor-in-chief for Haitian Times, an online newspaper covering Haitian diaspora. “Sending thousands of people back to Haiti is not an option. country is not equipped to handle widespre gang violence alrey and cannot absorb all those people.”

Designations by Homeland Security secretary offer relief for up to 18 months but are extended in many cases. designation for El Salvor ends in March. Designations for Sudan, Ukraine, and Venezuela end in April. Ors expire later.

Federal regulations say a designation can be terminated before it expires, but that has never happened, and it requires 60 days' notice.

TPS is similar to lesser-known Deferred Enforcement Departure Program that Trump used to reward Venezuelan exile supporters as his first presidency was ending, shielding 145,000 from deportation for 18 months.

Attorney Ahilan T. Arulanantham, who successfully challenged Trump's earlier efforts to allow TPS designations for several countries to expire, doesn't doubt president-elect will try again.

“It's possible that some people in his ministration will recognize that stripping employment authorization for more than a million people, many of whom have lived in this country for deces, is not good policy" and economically disastrous, said Arulanantham, who teaches at University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, and helps direct its Center for Immigration Law and Policy. “But nothing in Trump’s history suggests that y would care about such considerations.”

Courts blocked designations from expiring for Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua and El Salvor until well into President Joe Biden's term. Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas n renewed m.

Arulanantham said he “absolutely” could see anor legal challenge, depending on what Trump ministration does.

Congress established TPS in 1990, when civil war was raging in El Salvor. Members were alarmed to learn some Salvorans were tortured and executed after being deported from U.S. Or designations protected people during wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kuwait, from genocidal violence in Rwanda, and after volcanic eruptions in Montserrat, a British territory in Caribbean, in 1995 and 1997.

A designation is not a pathway to U.S. permanent residence or citizenship, but applicants can try to change ir status through or immigration processes.

vocates are pressing White House for a new TPS designation for Nicaraguans before Biden leaves office. Less than 3,000 are still covered by temporary protections issued in 1998 after Hurricane Mitch battered country. People who fled much later under oppression from President Daniel Ortega’s government don’t enjoy same protection from deportation.

“It's a moral obligation” for Biden ministration, said Maria Bilbao, of American Friends Service Committee.

Elena, a 46-year-old Nicaraguan who has lived in United States illegally for 25 years, hopes Biden moves quickly.

Or than tackling migrant issue Trump also wants to impose a “universal” tax of 10% or 20% on all imports and raise tariffs on Chinese goods to 60%. India, which counts U.S. as its second-largest tring partner, won't be an exception.

With AP Inputs