Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Wednesday that the Trump administration has revoked a decision that would have protected roughly 600,000 people from Venezuela from deportation, putting some at risk of being removed from the country in about two months.
Noem signed a notice reversing a move by her predecessor, Alejandro Mayorkas, in the waning days of the Biden administration to extend Temporary Protected Status. The change is effective immediately and comes amid a slew of actions as the Trump administration works to make good on promises to crack down on illegal immigration and carry out the largest mass deportation effort in U.S. history.
Experts and advocates said the immediate impact among those affected would be uncertainty and fear.
"I'm scared even though I'm here legally and I arrived legally," said Caren Anez, a 41-year-old single mother who requested TPS in 2023 and received it in 2024, after arriving in the U.S. on a tourist visa. "I am distraught, seeing how else I can stay here legally."
Anez said she left Venezuela because she feared being arrested for working as an independent news reporter for a Venezuelan site. She now works as office manager in Texas and said returning home is not an option.
"I cannot enter Venezuela because my life is in danger," she said.
More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have left their home country since 2013, when its economy unraveled and President Nicolas Maduro took office. Most settled in Latin America and the Caribbean, but after the pandemic, migrants increasingly set their sights on the United States.
Ahead of the presidential election last year, a nationwide poll by Venezuela-based research firm Delphos showed about a quarter of the population thinking about emigrating if Maduro was re-elected. Earlier this month, Maduro was sworn in for a third six-year term despite credible evidence that he lost July's election by a 2-to-1 margin.
Under the Biden administration extension, protections for Venezuelans were extended until October 2026. That now reverts to two separate designations — one that expires this April and one in September.
Venezuelans would lose their ability to work in the U.S. and be at risk of being deported.
Noem has until Saturday to decide what to do about the group whose protections expire in April and until July 12 for those whose protections expire in September. If she does nothing, the protections automatically extend for another six months.
The U.S. doesn't have diplomatic relations with Venezuela, limiting deportation options.
Federal regulations allow the extensions to be terminated early, though that's rarely been done, and groups sued when Trump took steps to end the protections during his first term.
The National TPS Alliance, an advocacy group, said Wednesday that it is prepared to challenge this decision in court.
Congress created TPS in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters or civil strife, giving people authorization to work in increments of up to 18 months at a time.
About 1 million immigrants from 17 countries are protected by TPS, including people from Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Sudan, Ukraine and Lebanon. Venezuelans are one of the largest beneficiaries.
The TPS designation gives people legal authority to be in the country but doesn't provide a long-term path to citizenship. They are reliant on the government renewing their status when it expires. Critics have said that over time, the renewal of the protection status becomes automatic, regardless of what is happening in the person's home country.
In addition to Venezuelans, the Biden administration in its waning days also extended the protections to more than 230,000 Salvadorans, 103,000 Ukrainians and 1,900 Sudanese already living in the U.S.
Noem did not say what would happen to them, and the DHS notice only refers to Venezuelans.
The policy change was first reported Tuesday by The New York Times.
