Biden issues sweeping deportation protections before Trump takes office

The Biden administration on Friday issued sweeping extensions of deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of people from Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela in a move that makes it nearly impossible for President-elect Donald J. Trump to quickly strip that benefit when he takes office.

Extending Temporary Protected Status, as the program is called, allows immigrants to remain in the country with work permits and a shield from deportation for another 18 months after their current protections expire in the spring. Late last year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken recommended extending the protection in a series of letters.

For decades, Democratic and Republican administrations have reserved protections for citizens of countries in turmoil and deemed unsafe to return to. President Biden has expanded who can obtain this status, with the outbreak of war in Ukraine and instability in countries such as Venezuela and Haiti.

“These designations are rooted in careful review and interagency collaboration to ensure those affected by environmental disasters and instability have the protection they need while continuing to contribute meaningfully to our communities,” Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security, said in a statement.

Mr. Trump has mocked the program and vowed to end it, at least for some countries. Migrant advocates had been urging the Biden administration to extend it to many of those countries before he took office.

In his first term, Trump ended status for about 400,000 people from El Salvador and other countries, then faced legal challenges.

According to the Congressional Research Service, more than 1 million immigrants from countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East have temporary protected status as of 2024.

The move makes it legally difficult for Mr. Trump to roll back protections for citizens of the four countries, at least until they expire sometime in 2026.

“Because President Biden has expanded protections for citizens of all of these countries, President Trump will not be able to deport these individuals anytime soon,” said Steve Yale Loehr, an immigration researcher at Cornell Law School.

“Trump cannot ignore what Congress wrote into law in 1990,” he said.

About 600,000 Venezuelans who currently enjoy protection will be allowed to renew and remain in the United States until October 2026, and about 232,000 immigrants from El Salvador will be able to do so. More than 100,000 Ukrainians will be able to stay in the United States until August 2026. About 1,900 people from Sudan will also be allowed to renew their status.

The program was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush to ensure that foreign nationals already in the United States can remain in the country if it is not safe for them to return to their home country due to a natural disaster, armed conflict, or other unrest. .

During the campaign, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance called the program illegal when he criticized Haitians who had settled in his home state of Ohio and benefited from it. Haiti is witnessing political unrest and gang violence, and about 200,000 of its citizens are protected from deportation under the temporary protection system until early 2026.

“We will stop providing block grants for temporary protected status,” Mr. Vance said in October.

Critics say that temporary protection is frequently extended and serves as a de facto means of enabling people to remain in the country indefinitely, as opposed to its intention to be a short-term solution.

Although the program has become almost permanent for many immigrants, it also highlights the extent of turmoil in many parts of the world and the failure of Congress to pass legislation to modernize the US immigration system to meet contemporary global immigration realities.

Immigrants from several countries, incl El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, They have been eligible for protection for more than two decades. Other countries, such as Ethiopia, Lebanon and Syria, were added recently.

Gonzalo Roa, 43, a Venezuelan beneficiary, said he was worried about the fate of the program.

“It’s great news that it’s being renovated,” said Mr. Roa, who lives in Columbus, Ohio. He works at a car dealership and runs a small restaurant with his wife.

Without temporary status, Mr. Roa said, he would lose his job at the agency and his two Venezuelan-born children would not be eligible for college scholarships and other benefits that require legal status.