WASHINGTON – Maria Eugenia Torres Ramirez never asked to live in the United States illegally. The Venezuelan political activist who is vehemently opposed to President Nicolas Maduro, approached a border official in Del Rio, Texas in 2021, sought asylum, and said she was afraid of life.
Torres Ramirez, 37, began Venezuela with two young children after federal police began shooting shots outside the restaurant and asking employees to tell them where she could find her. I ran away.
Torres Ramirez, who currently lives in Los Angeles, has strengthened her legal armor by obtaining temporary protected status as her asylum case is pending. She still has a work permit and is protected from deportation.
That was until the Trump administration moved to end the TPS for many Venezuelans.
“It created a lot of fear,” she said. “If they denied asylum, I would be even more uncertain. The moment he removes legal protection, we are illegal.”
The heart of President Trump’s campaign for reelection was becoming stricter against illegal immigration. But Trump has also cut back on the routes for legal immigration that provide life-saving corps to hundreds of thousands of people who have fled war and other political or humanitarian crises.
The Trump administration has shut down phone applications that immigrants used to legally enter the United States at the southern border. Refugees are suspended from hospitalization. Humanitarian programs that allowed Afghans, Ukrainians, Venezuelans and others to fly to the United States have been suspended. The widespread use of TPS, which applies to people in 17 countries, is expected to cease once the current designation expires.
During his first presidency, Trump ended the TPS with 95% of those who had it, including those in El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan, Nepal and Honduras. These terminations stagnated in court, and when President Biden took office, he reversed the course and expanded protections to include people from additional countries such as Venezuela, Ukraine, Ethiopia and Burma. Biden extended most of these protections for another 18 months. This is the maximum allowed by law.
The administration has already withdrawn Biden’s extension and has ended the TPS of 350,000 Venezuelans, like Torres Ramirez, who arrived before 2023. Their protection ends on April 7th. Another 250,000 Venezuelans will remain in protection until September.
Trump has ordered reviews of all TPS designations, and legal experts say the same justification for Venezuela’s firing can be applied to other countries that benefit.
Republicans, including Trump, saw Biden’s immigration program as a government-sanctioned method of promoting illegal immigration.
“They created several different buckets and called them legal routes, but that’s not the case,” Trump’s “border emperor” Tom Homan told Fox News in the evening after he took office. Ta. “The population of illegal aliens across borders is the same.”
The Biden administration oversaw an unprecedented expansion of temporary immigration protections. After illegal border intersections reached historic highs in 2023, the administration utilised these discretionary programs in the hopes of discouraging immigrants from overwhelming the US-Mexico border.
Trump has instructed authorities to stop allowing the United States to migrate through a process called parole, which is used for humanitarian or public interest purposes. Democrats and Republican administrations have dozens of them, including 30,000 Hungarians after the Soviet uprising in 1956, and more than 330,000 Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laos between 1975 and 1980 due to the Vietnam War. I have been using authority for years.
Trump’s first day executive order, “Protecting Americans from Aggression,” directs his administration to ensure that parole is “only exercised on a case-by-case basis.”
Minutes after Trump was sworn in, his administration closed CBP One. It is a mobile app that allows Mexican immigrants to request appointments with border authorities at official ports of entry. Since January 2023, nearly 1 million people have entered the country with two-year work permits through the app.
Many of those who arrived through CBP One and other humanitarian measures continued to apply for asylum. Immigrants can only submit an application for up to one year. However, those who have not yet applied can be targeted for deportation.
According to a January 23 memo signed by Caleb Vitello, acting director of US immigration customs, immigration agents are permitted to revoke their parole status and quickly remove anyone who has been in the US for less than two years . Rapidly tracked deportation avoids immigration court proceedings.
Trump has suspended programs that allowed US citizens to financially support people in Ukraine, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti. Immigrants purchased commercial flights to the US and were able to work legally for two years. About 240,000 Ukrainians, as well as more than 530,000 from four other countries, have arrived under these processes.
Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the Los Angeles-based National Day Worker Organization Network, said the motivation for limiting immigration was “not about fixing the so-called broken immigration system.” For them, it’s a fear of the non-white majority. ”
Trump’s orders will also affect the 76,000 Afghans who were evacuated after the collapse of Kabul in 2021. Many people are in asylum, but some may lose their legal status as they no longer renew their parole protections.
“These parole programs work like visas,” said Kendra Brandon, an attorney at the Amica Immigration Rights Center in Washington. “They were people who applied to enter the US before they arrived and went through the paperwork process. When applying for a tourist visa, they must prove they have the money to become tourists. People in this parole program have proven they have their own money and sponsored by US citizens.”
Citing “the burden of new arrivals,” Trump has suspended US refugee enrollment programs indefinitely, showing that he is escaping persecution based on political beliefs, religion, gender, or other factors They then followed thousands of refugees who had been approved for departure. The review process can take approximately two years and includes multiple interviews and security and health screenings.
Last fiscal year, the United States resettled more than 100,000 refugees. This is the highest number in 30 years.
The administration has also directed resettlement agencies to halt federal funds for services such as employment and medical assistance for refugees already in the United States.
Darya Hussein, who works with the Fresno immigration and refugee ministries, helps refugees during their first three months in the US, with her and her colleagues greeting newcomers at the airport and closing them to rental and furniture homes Apply for county benefits, apply for county benefits, and vaccinations required for schools.
Hussein welcomed around 150 people in December and roughly the same number in January, according to Hussein, who is from Afghanistan and Syria.
But since Trump stopped the refugee program, the job has stopped and shrieked. Families approved for resettlement in Fresno had to cancel their flights. Refugees who recently arrived in Central Valley suddenly found themselves without the support of businesses.
“We couldn’t serve them anymore,” Hussein said.
The population of immigrants without legal status reached a new high of 13.7 million in mid-2023, according to estimates released this month by the Institute for Non-Participation Immigration Policy. Immigration advocates say ending TPS and other legal measures to residence could have an unintended effect on those numbers.
For example, if someone loses TPS protection and does not leave the country or is unable to leave, they will increase the rank of an undocumented population.
Los Angeles Times staff writers Rebecca Previn and Rachel Ulanga contributed to this report.
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