Between long-term residents and more recent refugees, there are nearly a million people of Venezuelan origin in the U.S. Most live in Florida and Texas but there are significant numbers in the New York metropolitan area and Salt Lake City. Nearly half the population of Doral in South Florida— where Trump has a golf resort— are from Venezuela. There are at least a quarter million Venezuelans living in the Miami area and another 100,000 in the Orlando area. Mario Diaz-Balart has more Venezuelans— and more Venezuelan refugees— in his district than any other member of Congress. And the great majority of them are right-of-center, very anti-socialist and gravitating strongly towards the GOP, much the way Cuban refugees did after that country’s revolution.
So it’s bizarre that Biden granted Venezuelan refugees from Maduro’sauthoritarian regime temporary protected status, while the Trump administration is preparing to deport between 600,000 and 700,000 of them! Immediately after Democrats John Fetterman, Jeanne Shaheen, Maggie Hasan, Elissa Slotkin, Andy Kim, Gary Peters and Tim Kaine joined all the Republicans to confirm Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security, she “rescinded an 18-month extension of the temporary protected status (TPS) program, which allows for people to temporarily stay in the US if they cannot return safely to their home country… Noem told Fox News: ‘Before he left town, Mayorkas signed an order that said for 18 months, they were going to extend protection to people on Temporary Protected Status, which meant they were going to be able to stay here and violate our laws for another 18 months. We stopped that.’”
Yesterday, Hamid Aleaziz reported that “Undoing the extension could add to Trump’s crackdown on not only illegal immigration but also on immigrants whom the Biden administration had authorized to remain in the country. In the past, Trump has targeted immigrants under Temporary Protected Status, which aids migrants from some of the most unstable countries in the world. Republicans have argued, however, that the measure has strayed far from its original mission of providing temporary shelter from conflict or disaster.”
Those who initially received Temporary Protected Status in 2021 will maintain their protections through September, while those who obtained it in 2023 will have them until at least April. Ms. Noem now has until Saturday to make a decision on whether to issue her own extension on the group of Venezuelans who received their status in 2023.
If the administration does not make a decision by Saturday, the protections will extend for six months automatically, the notice said.
Immigrant advocates said the cancellation of the Biden administration’s extension would cause confusion and fear among Venezuelans across the United States.
“By taking this action, Secretary Noem is throwing over 600,000 into a state of ongoing bureaucratic limbo,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “People will no longer have any certainty as to whether they can stay in the country legally through the end of the year.”
He said the decision indicated that the Trump administration could also decide not to make its own extension for Venezuelans who received their status in 2023.
“If the Trump administration moves to terminate T.P.S. for over 600,000 Venezuelans, it could also have significant impacts on the economy, as nearly all of those with status are working here legally,” he added.
When the Biden administration moved to extend the protections this month, it cited “political and economic crises under the inhumane Maduro regime.”
The statement said that “these conditions have contributed to high levels of crime and violence, impacting access to food, medicine, health care, water, electricity and fuel.”
And Diaz-Balart? He said that Venezuelans who live in the U.S. illegally but otherwise obey the law have little to fear. “You can’t deport them back to [Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua],” he said. “You can’t deport somebody back to a country where you know they’re going to potentially suffer real persecution.” Is that so? What’s he going to do about it?