Washington: The Trump administration has announced that it will end the deportation protections for thousands of Afghans and Cameroonians living in the United States, a spokesman for the Ministry of Internal Security said on Friday.
It is estimated that 14,600 Afghans eligible for temporary protected status (TPS) will now lose it in May. About 7,900 Cameroonians had access to the status but will lose it in June after termination.
President Donald Trump, a Republican, assumed a position in January to expel the record number of migrants living in the United States illegally. At the same time, he quickly moved to temporary legal protection migrants, widening the net of potential deportees.
Trump criticized high levels of illegal immigration under former Democratic President Joe Biden and argued that Biden’s programs offering legal status exceeded the legal authority.
The TPS program is accessible to people whose countries of origin have experienced natural disasters, armed conflicts or other extraordinary events. The status, which lasts 6 to 18 months, can be renewed by the Secretary of Homeland Security and offers deportation protection and access to work permits.
Internal security secretary Kristi Noem determined that conditions in Afghanistan and Cameroon no longer justified protected status, spokesman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
Trump tried to end most TPS registrations during his 2017-2021 presidency, but was blocked by the federal courts. At the end of March, an American district judge interrupted his efforts to end the status of the Venezuelans, declaring that the representation of migrant officials as criminals “feels racism”.
Conditional release revoked
The United States has evacuated more than 82,000 Afghanists from Afghanistan after taking control of the Taliban in 2021, including more than 70,000 people who entered the country with a temporary “parole”, which allowed a legal entry for two years.
Temporary protected status offered another protective avenue. DHS said in 2023 that the designation was justified due to armed conflicts and insurrection in Afghanistan.
Lawyers have declared in recent days that migrants who had entered the United States via an application of the Biden era known as CBP One, including the Afghans, have received opinions revoining their temporary parole and ordering them to leave the country within seven days.
McLaughlin confirmed this week that the department had revoked the conditional release of certain migrants, declaring that the DHS “exercised its discretionary authority”. It has not provided figures on the number of revocations.
“People affected are invited to self-conform voluntarily using the Home CBP application,” she said in a statement.
Notices look like messages sent by mistake last week to the Ukrainians.
