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'Cruel': Trump Moves to End TPS for Quarter of a Million Venezuelans
"For the last four years, they've been working legally and paying taxes like everyone else," said one advocate. "Now Trump's going to kick them all out."
Sep 04, 2025
As tensions between the US and Venezuela were inflamed Wednesday by the Trump administration's deadly attack on a boat off the coast of the South American country, the Department of Homeland Security announced it was ending legal protections for more than a quarter of a million Venezuelans who President Donald Trump had previously shielded from deportation.
US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) declared that allowing Venezuelan nationals to remain in the US with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was "not in America's best interests," but the move was swiftly denounced as both cruel and misguided by critics.
The administration had weighed "public safety, national security, migration factors, immigration policy, economic considerations, and foreign policy," spokesperson Matthew Tragesser said, and urged Venezuelan migrants to "self-deport." USCIS also said that "conditions in Venezuela no longer meet the TPS statutory requirements."
More than 250,000 Venezuelans who were granted TPS in 2021 have faced a September 10 expiration date on their status, but the Trump administration had the option to renew their status.
The migrants are not part of a separate group of 350,000 Venezuelans whose TPS status the Supreme Court allowed President Donald Trump to revoke in May; those migrants were granted the protections by the Biden administration in 2023.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro declared an "economic emergency" in April, attributing the country's financial struggles to Trump's tariffs. The country has also faced years of economic mismanagement and US sanctions, exacerbating the crisis, and Maduro's government has repressed protests against his controversial reelection in 2024. The UN special rapporteur on the right to food said after a visit to the country earlier this year that nearly 82% of people in Venezuela were living in poverty and more than half had insufficient income to purchase a basic food basket.
Critics on Wednesday noted that the US State Department continues to advise Americans not to travel to Venezuela, saying there is a "high risk of wrongful detention, torture in detention, terrorism, kidnapping, arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, and poor health infrastructure."
While Venezuelans "are going hungry and without food and medicine," said US Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.), "the Trump Admin. is stripping TPS for Venezuelans in the US and is claiming that conditions in Venezuela are not that bad."
Andrea Flores, vice president of immigration policy and campaigns at FWD.us, said USCIS did not make clear "how ending TPS for Venezuelans is in the best interest of the United States."
"Not only is this a mass de-legalization effort, it pushes hundreds of thousands of people out of the workforce," said Flores. "The economic consequences of the shrinking workforce impacts all of us."
Since taking office, Trump has designated the Venezuelan street gang Tren de Aragua a terrorist organization and has claimed it coordinates with the Maduro government—an assessment rejected by US intelligence agencies. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested about 8,000 Venezuelans in the first half of 2025, and the administration has used the Alien Enemies Act—previously only used in wartime—to expel hundreds of Venezuelans from the US. On Wednesday, a federal court ruled that Trump had illegally invoked the law.
The administration has claimed it is rounding up criminals, but an analysis in June by the libertarian Cato Institute found that 65% of people arrested by ICE had no criminal conviction, and 93% were not convicted for violent crimes.
The administration has also deployed several warships off the coast of Venezuela as he's threatened military force against drug cartels in the country, despite the lack of evidence that cartel activity takes place there. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, just 2% of all cocaine seized by the agency is in Venezuela.
On Wednesday, the administration drew outrage from human rights advocates as it announced it had attacked a boat that it claimed was transporting cocaine and linked to Tren de Aragua, killing 11 people.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, emphasized that the TPS beneficiaries who are now being ordered to "self-deport" or face expulsion "were previously granted deportation protections by Trump himself."
"Every person under this protection has been vetted at least twice," he said. "Anyone with any serious offense on their record is ineligible for protections. For the last four years, they've been working legally and paying taxes like everyone else. Now Trump's going to kick them all out."
"This is a quarter million people whose lives are about to be completely upended," he added, "for nothing but politics."
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Vast Majority of 'Refugees' Accepted Under New Trump Plan Will Be White South Africans
"The Trump administration has sent a dangerous message," one refugee wrote, "that in a multiracial democracy, the loss of white dominance is equivalent to persecution."
Aug 15, 2025
The administration of US President Donald Trump is reportedly discussing a refugee program that would grant the majority of admissions to the white South African minority that ruled the country through apartheid for decades.
Reuters reported Friday that the administration was mulling a cap of 40,000 refugees entering the United States next year, down from the 100,000 allowed in by former President Joe Biden.
According to two officials, who spoke with Reuters anonymously, "30,000 of the 40,000 spaces would be devoted to Afrikaners, a largely Dutch-descended minority in South Africa that Trump has prioritized for resettlement."
At the end of 2024, the United Nations Refugee Agency reported that there were nearly 43 million people worldwide recognized as refugees, who are forced to flee their home countries due to violence, persecution, or human rights violations.
Among them are:
- Nearly 6 million Syrians forced to flee deprivation, violence, and persecution amid the country's decade of brutal civil war;
- 6 million Afghans facing persecution after the Taliban returned to power in 2021;
- Over 4 million Sudanese and South Sudanese people displaced by war and famine;
- 1.3 million refugees from Myanmar, including the Rohingya, who are fleeing what is recognized by the US as a genocide; and
- The million and growing Haitians fleeing the gang warfare that has overtaken their impoverished nation.
At the beginning of his second term, Trump emphatically slammed the door on all of these groups, indefinitely suspending the US Refugee Admissions Program and halting the process for about 600,000 refugees who were being considered for admission and thousands who'd been approved.
He also shut down CBP One, the application allowing asylum-seekers fleeing violence and poverty to apply for entry at the Southern border legally, and revoked the legal status of millions of people in the country under humanitarian parole and Temporary Protected Status (TPS), many of whom now face deportation.
While turning away countless millions facing death and danger, Trump has welcomed Afrikaners, the minority group that implemented and enforced a racist and anti-democratic system of apartheid that deprived Black people of their rights in South Africa until 1994.
Trump is a proponent of the false theory that, since the end of apartheid, South Africa's democratically elected Black government has systematically oppressed and allowed for the murder of white farmers, referring to it as a "genocide."
That theory has been bolstered by Trump's billionaire ally Elon Musk, who is also a white South African. Earlier this year, the artificial intelligence chatbot on his social media platform X, known as "Grok," began to inexplicably discuss so-called "white genocide" in South Africa in response to unrelated prompts, which led many to speculate that Musk had programmed it to amplify the conspiracy theory.
However, as Joe Walsh, a white journalist from South Africa, noted in an article for Current Affairs last year, South Africa's Black population is killed at 10 times the rate of its white population.
In large part due to the legacy of apartheid, white South Africans also have 20 times the wealth of Black ones and hold the vast majority of land in the country despite being just over 7% of the population.
Meanwhile, white South African organizations like AfriForum have argued that efforts by the current government to more equitably distribute land constitute a form of racial discrimination and even genocide against whites.
"The myth's purpose," Walsh wrote, "is to make it seem dangerous to have Black people in control of the government."
But it's a myth with purchase in the White House. While virtually every other refugee group was left in limbo, Trump wrote on Truth Social in April that "Any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to Citizenship. This process will begin immediately!"
In May, 59 Afrikaners arrived at Dulles Airport in Washington, DC, where the Trump administration celebrated their arrival.
Bill Frelick, director of Human Rights Watch's Refugee and Migrant Rights program, told PBS News, "There were refugees who had been identified, vetted, who had spent years as refugees, and their hopes for admission to the United States after years of suffering had been crushed."
"That now the one exception would be made for Afrikaners," he said, "just seems like a cruel twist to those refugees to whom the door was closed in their face."
Last month, Reuters reported that a senior official from the State Department told the government of South Africa that it was not allowed to process refugees of mixed-race descent who spoke the Afrikaans language for entry into the US. The official said that the resettlement program was only "intended for white people."
In The Hill, opinion contributor Lok Darjee—himself a Bhutanese refugee who fled war in 2011—has described the Trump administration's embrace of white South Africans over other refugees as emblematic of its "racist ideology."
"By admitting white South Africans as refugees and victims of racial persecution," Darjee said, "the Trump administration has sent a dangerous message that in a multiracial democracy, the loss of white dominance is equivalent to persecution."
"In this narrative, South Africa becomes a warning of what awaits the United States should Black and nonwhite Americans gain political power," he continued. "As America becomes a more diverse nation, those who equate whiteness with greatness see this shift not as progress, but as a threat."
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Ripping DHS Chief's Racism, Judge Extends Protections for 60K Hondurans, Nepalis, and Nicaraguans
"Secretary Noem's statements perpetuate the discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population," the judge wrote, stressing that "color is neither a poison nor a crime."
Aug 01, 2025
"The freedom to live fearlessly, the opportunity of liberty, and the American dream. That is all plaintiffs seek. Instead, they are told to atone for their race, leave because of their names, and purify their blood. The court disagrees."
That's how U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson began a Thursday order postponing recent moves by President Donald Trump's administration to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for around 60,000 migrants from Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issues TPS designations for countries impacted by war, environmental disasters, or other extraordinary conditions, allowing migrants from those nations to legally live and work in the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced in June and July that the administration would end TPS for people from Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua this summer. The decisions followed similar attempts to terminate those designations during Trump's first term—efforts blocked by U.S. courts and then ended under former President Joe Biden.
"As a TPS holder and mother, this victory means safety, hope, and the chance to keep building our lives here."
When Trump returned to power in January, he issued an executive order titled "Protecting the American People Against Invasion," which was "cited in later decisions vacating or terminating TPS designations," Thompson pointed out. The judge, who was appointed to the Northern District of California by Biden, also highlighted "repeated rhetoric by administration officials that associated immigrants and TPS holders with criminal activity or other undesirable traits."
The 37-page order details some of Noem's comments during her confirmation hearing and news interviews. Thompson wrote that "these statements reflect the secretary's animus against immigrants and the TPS program even though individuals with TPS hold lawful status—a protected status that was expressly conferred by Congress with the purpose of providing humanitarian relief."
"Their presence is not a crime. Rather, TPS holders already live in the United States and have contributed billions to the economy by legally working in jobs, paying taxes, and paying contributions into Medicare and Social Security," she noted. "By stereotyping the TPS program and immigrants as invaders that are criminal, and by highlighting the need for migration management, Secretary Noem's statements perpetuate the discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population."
"Color is neither a poison nor a crime," stressed the judge, who is Black. She concluded that the various TPS holders who are the plaintiffs provided "sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the secretary's TPS Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua terminations were based on a preordained determination to end the TPS program, rather than an objective review of the country conditions."
Thompson ordered the TPS terminations for the three countries postponed until a November 18 hearing on the merits of the case, at which point her decision will be subject to extension.
🚨 JUST IN: A district court has ruled that TPS for Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua cannot be terminated at this time — protections will remain in place through at least November 18, 2025 as the case continues.
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— Haitian Bridge Alliance (@haitianbridge.bsky.social) July 31, 2025 at 11:57 PM
"Judge Thompson's decision renews hope for our immigrant communities—especially for the tens of thousands of TPS holders from Honduras, Nicaragua, and Nepal who have lived here for decades and are part of the National TPS Alliance," said Teofilo Martinez, a Honduran TPS holder, plaintiff, and an alliance leader, in a statement.
"This ruling gives us strength, affirms the power of organizing, and reminds us what's at stake: the right to stay in the only home many of us have ever known," Martinez added. "We will keep fighting for permanent protections and to stop the cruel separation of our families."
Sandhya Lama, another plaintiff and TPS holder from Nepal, described the judge's order as "a powerful affirmation of our humanity and our right to live without fear."
"As a TPS holder and mother, this victory means safety, hope, and the chance to keep building our lives here," she said. "We stand united, grateful, and determined to continue the fight for a permanent future in the country we call home."
The plaintiffs are represented by the ACLU Foundations of Northern California and Southern California, Haitian Bridge Alliance, National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), and Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law.
"The Trump administration is aggressively, and illegally, seeking to dismantle TPS. But they will not do so without a fight," said ACLU of Northern California attorney Emi MacLean. "Today is a good day. Sixty60,000 long-term residents of the U.S., who have followed all the rules, will be allowed to remain in the U.S. and continue to defend their rights inside and outside of court."
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