The Trump administration is ending Joe Biden’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 300,000 Venezuelans allowed into the country during the Biden years.
Biden threw the door wide open for unvetted Venezuelans on several occasions during his presidency. In September of 2023, for instance, he extended his quasi-amnesty to more than 470,000 Venezuelans and gave them work permits to get jobs in the U.S.
Since that time, some 600,000 Venezuelans have flooded into the U.S., and in the waning days of his presidency, Biden’s Department of Homeland Security tried to extend that status by giving almost one million migrants another year and a half of TPS coverage.
Trump, though, has pulled back on that 18-month extension offered by former DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and has now announced that TPS is ending and is giving the Venezuelan nationals two months to make arrangements before they are open for deportation, according to the New York Times.
RELATED: Texas Troopers Remove Venezuelan Flag Planted by Migrants on Border River Island
The president’s reportedly impending 60-day notice comes as crimes by members of the dangerous Venezuelan street gang Tren de Aragua continue to rise all across the country after untold thousands of gang members came in among other migrants from Venezuela.
Along with the various Mexican drug cartels, Trump designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization during his first days in office.
The notice also breaks the Venezuelan migrants into two groups with more that 250,000 being told their protections will end in September, and another 300,000 finding theirs ends in April, he Times reported.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a lawyer with the left-wing, pro-illegal migrant non-governmental activist group American Immigration Council, claims that his organization and others will launch lawsuits against the Trump administration’s cancelation of Biden’s various TPS programs. Reichlin-Melnick, though, noted that it might be a bit harder for the activists to win in court for Trump’s second term than it was for them in his first term.
RELATED: Mostly Venezuelan Migrant Families Continue Crossing West Texas Border
“There will be lawsuits against this,” Reichlin-Melnick wrote on the left-wing social media outlet BlueSky. “In Trump’s first term, lawsuits halted him from terminating any TPS designation. But those lawsuits were in uncharted territory and now there is precedent, and it’s not all good. And the timeline is very different; this is happening much earlier. So more to come.”
Activists claim that the end of TPS puts an unfair burden on hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who are unable to return to their home country. But Trump said last week that Venezuela has agreed to take its citizens back.
“Venezuela has agreed to receive, back into their Country, all Venezuela illegal aliens who were encamped in the U.S., including gang members of Tren de Aragua,” the president wrote Saturday on Truth Social. “Venezuela has further agreed to supply the transportation back. We are in the process of removing record numbers of illegal aliens from all Countries, and all Countries have agreed to accept these illegal aliens back.”
The Trump administration has also ended Biden’s TPS for migrants from El Salvador and Haiti, though in their case the Trump administration gave them an 18-month notice.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston
Jesus Christ is King
