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For Immediate Release
September, 21 2023, 04:21pm EDT
Contact:
AIUSA media office,Email:,media@aiusa.org,Phone: 202-544-0200 x302
Amnesty International USA welcomes Venezuela TPS Announcement and calls for Biden to take action for Cameroon and other countries
Amnesty International USA welcomes the Biden Administration’s announcement to extend and redesignate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for over 470,000 Venezuelans currently in the United States. Over 7 million Venezuelans have fled Venezuela due to the complex humanitarian emergency and widespread human rights violations being committed in the country. This announcement is a critical recognition of the protection needs of Venezuelans, to ensure they have the ability to work and build lives in the United States without fear of deportation.
The Biden Administration’s move is an important victory for the Venezuelan community as well as organizers and state and local officials who have been welcoming high numbers of Venezuelans into their communities. Around the country, people are mobilizing to welcome asylum seekers with dignity, but they can’t do it alone. TPS for Venezuela is a critical relief that will ease the pressure on local cities to provide for a new population of Venezuelans seeking safety and security, but were left without the ability to work and build lives for themselves.
While we celebrate these important protections for Venezuelans, the Biden Administration must act to extend protections for nationals from other countries, including Cameroon and Central American countries who are facing conditions warranting protection. In particular, Cameroon is dealing with three concurrent crises in the country, marked by political instability, multiple armed conflicts, and unrest. The humanitarian and human rights situation in Cameroon has only worsened since it was initially designated for TPS. The current designation for Cameroon will expire on December 7th of this year, and the Administration must act by October 8th to extend and redesignate TPS for Cameroon.
Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
(212) 807-8400LATEST NEWS
Hours After US Citizen Shot Dead by ICE, JD Vance Says ‘Door-to-Door’ Operations Are Coming
"This is starting to look disturbingly like Germany in the 1930s."
Jan 08, 2026
Just hours after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed an unarmed US citizen in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance said the agency would soon be going "door to door" across the country to escalate the Trump administration's mass deportation crusade in the coming year.
In an interview on Fox News with host Jesse Watters, Vance boasted that during Trump's first year back in power, the administration had gotten "2.5 million illegal aliens out" of the country, "without any of the really big marquee things that we've been working on."
Notably, only about 600,000 of these have been through formal deportations, while the rest have been through what the White House claims are "self-deportations." Despite claims to the contrary, the vast majority of those detained by ICE have had no criminal records. Many have been legal residents, green card holders, and asylum seekers following the legal process.
ICE’s budget is expected to triple in 2026 following the passage of Republican budget legislation last year that has allowed it to launch what it calls a “wartime recruitment” strategy, hiring as many as 10,000 new officers with minimal training. Last week, the Washington Post reported that the agency had earmarked $100 million toward online recruitment advertisements, meant to draw in “people who have attended UFC fights, listened to patriotic podcasts, or shown an interest in guns and tactical gear.”
Vance continued, "I think we're going to see those [deportation] numbers ramp up as we get more and more people online and working for ICE, going door to door and making sure that if you're an illegal alien, you've got to get out of this country, and if you want to come back, apply through the proper channels."
Vance’s comments came shortly after news broke that an ICE agent had fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a Minneapolis resident and widowed mother of three children, as she attempted to drive away from the scene in her car. Good was at the scene as a legal observer following a surge of more than 2,000 ICE agents to the city.
The Trump administration has stood by the ICE shooter and described Good as a "domestic terrorist" who attempted to run over the agent in her car. But video evidence contradicts this claim, showing Good attempting to pivot her car away from the agents and only accelerating the vehicle after shots were fired, while the agent walked away from the incident unharmed.
Especially in light of the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen who was legally observing agents, Vance’s comments about ICE going “door to door” to homes in the coming year sounded ominous to many.
"Door to door?" asked one incredulous social media user. "The Fourth Amendment still exists. This is starting to look disturbingly like Germany in the 1930s."
"Under the Fourth Amendment, federal agents are generally not allowed to stop someone unless they have good reason to suspect that they are breaking laws," explained Jesse Franzblau, the associate director of policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center, during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing in November. "Yet a growing number of people, many of them Latinx, have reported being targeted, harassed, and detained by ICE and CBP agents solely because of their race."
The Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed that Fourth Amendment protections are strongest in the home, where the government is required to obtain a judicial warrant before entering private residences. However, in many cases, ICE has flouted these rules when carrying out arrests.
"Whether you’re left or right, the thought of living in an America where the government goes 'door to door,' and that those words actually came out of the vice president of the United States’ mouth, should worry you deeply," said Simon Samano, an editor at USA Today.
The Trump administration has increasingly promoted the idea of using ICE to target American citizens. The administration has pledged to strip citizenship from as many as 200 naturalized citizens per month in 2026, a tenfold increase from previous years. Trump and his allies have suggested using denaturalization to kick out some of his top critics, including the Somali-born Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and New York City's first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
Last week, a post by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, glorified the idea of Trump carrying out "100 million deportations," which, if realized, would necessitate the stripping of citizenship from tens of millions of naturalized and US-born citizens. According to a YouGov poll published last week, the majority of Republican voters support the idea of deporting over a fourth of the country.
In October, ProPublica reported that at least 170 US citizens had been wrongly detained in immigration custody since Trump returned to office last January. Meanwhile, Gregory Bovino, the commander at large of the Border Patrol, has previously suggested that US citizens must be prepared to prove their citizenship at a moment's notice if stopped by immigration agents.
Yet on Wednesday, even after an agent shot a US citizen in cold blood, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, clad in an oversized cowboy hat, assured the public that “anyone who is a citizen of this country or is here legally has nothing to fear.”
Hours after Good was shot, another group of agents, including Bovino, were filmed demanding the identification of another driver, a Somali man who said he was an Uber driver waiting to pick up a passenger at the Minneapolis airport, asking him to prove his US citizenship.
One of the agents was heard telling the man he did not believe he was a US citizen because "I can hear you don’t have the same accent as me.”
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More Shocking Footage Shows Federal Agents Raiding Minneapolis High School, Handcuffing Staff
"They’re just animals," said a local school official of the federal agents. "I've never seen people behave like this."
Jan 08, 2026
Federal immigration enforcement agents on Wednesday swarmed a high school in Minneapolis, where footage and photographs showed them handcuffing school staff members and firing chemical irritants at students.
According to a report from KSTP 5 Eyewitness News, the agents descended upon Roosevelt High School on Wednesday afternoon, mere hours after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer fatally shot 37-year-old Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good.
A witness who watched the raid described seeing administrators and staff trying to get the agents away from the building to stop them from apprehending students.
The witness also said that the agents began deploying pepper spray after some students started protesting against their presence on school property.
A Roosevelt High School official confirmed to MPR News that agents wearing US Border Patrol uniforms pepper sprayed students, while also firing pepper balls at them.
Video footage taken from the scene shows agents deploying chemical irritants at demonstrators.
An official from Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis told MPR News that armed U.S. Border Patrol officers came onto school property during dismissal Wednesday and began tackling people; they handcuffed two staff members and released chemical weapons on bystanders. pic.twitter.com/171JUUfew8
— CAIN (@XTechPulse) January 8, 2026
The school official also told MPR News that the agents handcuffed two staff members at the school, and they described getting into a physical confrontation with an agent as they were trying to tell them to leave school property.
"The guy, I’m telling him like, ‘Please step off the school grounds,’ and this dude comes up and bumps into me and then tells me that I pushed him, and he’s trying to push me, and he knocked me down,” the official said. "They don’t care. They’re just animals. I’ve never seen people behave like this.”
Meanwhile near where they killed Renee Good ICE was terrorizing a high school — and now Minneapolis has canceled school for the week.
None of this is about safety. A lawless regime with no guardrails. pic.twitter.com/H8l2nXn2FQ
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) January 8, 2026
In the wake of the raid on the high school, Minneapolis Public Schools announced that it would be canceling all classes for the rest of the week "out of an abundance of caution," citing "safety concerns" for faculty and students.
Celia Mejia, a Minneapolis woman whose daughter attends the Green Central Elementary School in the southern part of the city, told KSTP 5 Eyewitness News that she had to pick up her daughter on Wednesday after the school went on lockdown after federal immigration agents were spotted in the area.
"That was way too close to school to feel comfortable," Mejia said.
Julia Haas, another local resident who picked up her child at the elementary school after it went into lockdown, told KSTP 5 Eyewitness News that she was "very" frightened by the ordeal.
"Nobody should have to deal with this ever," Haas emphasized.
The reasons for the raid on the high school were unclear, and the US Department of Homeland Security did not respond to KSTP Eyewitness 5 News' or MPR News' requests for comment.
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Democrats Launch Probe to Learn What Trump Told Oil Giants About Venezuela Attack—and When
"Oil company executives seem to know more about Trump's secret plan to 'run' Venezuela than the American people," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren. "We need public Senate hearings NOW."
Jan 08, 2026
Democrats in the US Senate on Wednesday launched a formal investigation into possible dealings between the Trump administration and oil company executives related to Saturday's military assault on Venezuela, the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro, and the effort now underway to seize and control the Latin American nation's vast oil reserves.
Led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.)—ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW)—the Democratic lawmakers, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and others, want to know more about "communications between major U.S. oil and oilfield services companies and the Trump Administration surrounding last week’s military action in Venezuela and efforts to exploit Venezuelan oil resources."
Following Saturday's strikes on Venezuela and the kidnapping of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores—which international law experts have said were clear breaches of both international law and US constitutional law–Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday that he had spoken to oil executives both "before and after" the covert military actions.
While other White House officials walked back Trump's statements, the senators behind the investigation say they want to know more about what was discussed, with whom, and when.
According to a statement, the lawmakers are "requesting documents and information regarding the companies’ knowledge of the strikes, discussions with Trump Administration officials before and since the operation, and plans to invest in Venezuela from the CEOs of BP America Inc., Baker Hughes, Chevron, Citgo Petroleum Corporation, ConocoPhillips, Continental Resources, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, SLB, Shell USA, Inc., and Weatherford International."
In a series of letters to the heads of those oil giants, the senators said, “President Trump’s own statements justifying the operation in terms of access to foreign energy resources and benefits to the US oil industry, reported repeated engagement between industry and government, and the suggestion that taxpayers could pay the cost of rebuilding Venezuela’s oil infrastructure raise serious concerns about how the Trump Administration engaged with the oil companies prior to his decision to use military force in Venezuela."
“We would like to know," the letters continue, "the extent to which US oil and gas companies such as yours had either advance knowledge of or the ability to shape American foreign policy decisions—especially given that Congress was kept in the dark concerning the use of force until after the strikes occurred.”
The lawmakers noted that Trump has also suggested that US taxpayer funds would be used to "help companies cover their costs to rebuild Venezuelan oil infrastructure," spend they warned could "cost American taxpayers billions more in the form of subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, which already benefits from over $700 billion annually in subsidies," citing analysis by the International Monetary Fund.
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