Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen announced Friday that Temporary Protected Status for about 86,000 Hondurans would not be renewed, though she delayed termination of the program until January 2020.
This move is part of the administration’s long-overdue effort to put the “temporary” back into Temporary Protected Status. CNN has a good chart here, but the one bit of information it leaves out is when these “temporary” amnesty grants (that include work permits, Social Security numbers, etc.) were made. TPS for a quarter-million Salvador illegal immigrants (plus a few temporary legal visitors), scheduled to end next fall, was granted in 2001 because of an earthquake. Illegal aliens from Honduras and Nicaragua lucky enough to be in the U.S. when Hurricane Mitch struck have enjoyed this temporary amnesty since 1999. And the few hundred Somalis with TPS received this temporary status in 1991.
Once granted, this status has been renewed, pro forma, by administrations Republican and Democrat. The justifications for these renewals became increasingly fantastical as the original reasons for the grants faded from memory. Two years ago, when Honduran TPS was last extended, among the justifications offered by the Obama administration were a coffee rust epidemic and increase in mosquito-borne diseases. As I told the Times Friday, “Honduras long ago reverted to its regular messed-up state, not the special post-hurricane messed-up state required by the TPS statute.”
Before the Trump administration, no one — not a single person — was ever made to leave because his TPS expired. While none of the TPS grants has actually ended yet, because of grace periods, this administration has at least set in motion the termination of TPS for almost all the 400,000-plus people who have it.
Read the rest from Mark Krikorian HERE.
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