This February, a panel of conservative federal judges ruled that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can move forward with terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for immigrants from Nicaragua, Honduras, and Nepal.
For the over 60,000 immigrants impacted by this decision, this is an incredible loss.
As Jessica Bansal, an attorney with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, writes, the “decision allows mothers, fathers, students, and workers who have lived lawfully in this country for decades to be stripped of status without even acknowledging the devastation caused to them and their families or the contribution they have made to their communities.”
Let’s be clear about what’s happening here: DHS is eliminating Temporary Protected Status for immigrants who are lawfully residing in the United States solely on the basis of their race, ethnicity, and nationality.
They are turning documented immigrants into undocumented immigrants, slandering them as “killers” and “leeches” simply to create the pretext for more ICE violence.
This is not speculation. Before a judge blocked its termination, TPS for Haitians was slated to end on February 3.
News outlets began reporting in late January that the Trump administration was planning to launch an operation targeting Haitians in Springfield, Ohio and across the state.
The end of TPS would have set the stage for another brutal Minnesota-style operation.
While DHS denies that such an operation was planned, the end of Temporary Protected Status would still give federal agents — who are operating under mandatory arrest quotas — an excuse to question any given Black person in Ohio under suspicion that they may be an undocumented Haitian immigrant.
After all, President Trump’s Supreme Court justices have ruled that immigration enforcement agents can use race as the basis for stopping people.
While the end of Temporary Protected Status for immigrants is particularly dangerous for people of color, as the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti make clear, more ICE is bad for everyone.
What’s more, DHS is deporting them to nations — including Nicaragua, Honduras, and Nepal — that are currently facing political turmoil.
The Trump administration has also terminated Temporary Protected Status for people from Venezuela, Afghanistan, Cameroon, and Cuba.
Since then, the U.S. has invaded Venezuela and kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro.
The Trump administration is currently imposing a total blockade on oil imports to Cuba, while threatening retaliatory tariffs on any country that sells oil to the Cuban government.
Afghanistan and Cameroon continue to struggle with their own political instability and social upheaval.
In short, none of these countries are in a position to welcome tens of thousands of people.
At the same time that the Trump administration is deliberately manufacturing these humanitarian crises, it is weakening international aid networks.
This includes eliminating the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization, the UN Human Rights Council, and other organizations.
In their absence, vulnerable countries will be left to fend for themselves — or worse, become the next victim of Trump’s global real estate firm: the deceptively named Board of Peace.
The Trump administration has attempted and thus far been successfully blocked from ending Temporary Protected Status for people from Ethiopia, Haiti, South Sudan, Burma, and Syria.
TPS is currently scheduled to end for Somali, Yemeni, Salvadoran, Sudanese, and Ukrainian nationals in the upcoming months.
While judges may rule against some of these efforts, DHS will likely appeal until they find a court that will give them the decision they want.
Temporary Protected Status was specifically designed to aid those in need — its moral and political duty cannot be forfeited to the racist and xenophobic whims of this administration.
We must stand with our immigrant neighbors and push our elected officials to put guardrails on DHS’s clear abuse of power.
This op-ed originally appeared on OtherWords.org and was republished here under a CC BY-ND 3.0 license.
