Many Venezuelans are readying to leave the United States after Temporary Protected Status ended for more than 300,000 Venezuelans in the United States, reports the Washington Post.
The Supreme Court last month allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to strip legal protections from Venezuelan migrants.
The justices issued an emergency order, putting on hold a lower court ruling by U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco that found the administration had wrongly ended temporary protected status for the Venezuelans. The three liberal justices dissented.
Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, is a U.S. immigration designation allowing people from certain countries experiencing conflict or disaster to live and work in the U.S. temporarily.
The Post said many Venezuelans are shuttering businesses, selling homes, and boarding flights to leave the U.S. following the order.
“These are people who did everything by the book, paid taxes, had no criminal records, opened businesses, and contributed to their communities,” Venezuelan American activist Adelys Ferro told the Post.
“Now from one day to the other they’re subject to deportation and have become collateral damage in this cruel, unjust, and inhumane political game.”
Congress created TPS in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters, civil strife, or other dangerous conditions. The designation can be granted by the Homeland Security secretary.
A 56-year-old Venezuelan journalist told the Post the U.S. government was “essentially sending us back into the hands of our jailer.”
“There’s just no winning: You can stay here and risk ending up in a detention center or go back to Venezuela and end up in El Helicoide,” he said, referring to a notorious torture center in the South American nation.
Trump has made cracking down on immigration — legal and illegal — a central plank of his second term as president and has moved to strip certain migrants of temporary legal protections, expanding the pool of possible deportees.
The U.S. government under Biden designated Venezuelans as eligible for TPS in 2021 and 2023. Just days before Trump returned to office in January, Biden’s administration extended the program to October 2026.
Newsmax wires contributed to this report.
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