Nick Miroff and Karen DeYoung report in the Washington Post:
“More than 300,000 Central Americans and Haitians living in the United States under a form of temporary permission no longer need to be shielded from deportation, the State Department told Homeland Security officials this week, a few days ahead of a highly anticipated DHS announcement about whether to renew that protection.
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent a letter to acting DHS secretary Elaine Duke to inform her that conditions in Central America and Haiti that had been used to justify the protection no longer necessitate a reprieve for the migrants, some of whom have been allowed to live and work in the United States for 20 years under a program known as Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
Tillerson’s assessment, required by law, has not been made public, but its recommendations were confirmed by several administration officials familiar with its contents. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
DHS has until Monday to announce its plans for roughly 57,000 Hondurans and 2,500 Nicaraguans whose TPS protections will expire in early January. Although most arrived here illegally, they were exempted from deportation after Hurricane Mitch devastated Central America in 1998. Their TPS protections have been renewed routinely since then, in some cases following additional natural disasters and resulting insecurity
. . . .
Advocates say removing TPS would be a cruel blow to long-standing, law-abiding immigrants, forcing them to decide between remaining in the country illegally or leaving their homes and families. According to a recent study by the left-leaning Center for American Progress, TPS recipients have nearly 275,000 U.S.-born children.
If recipients lose their protections but defy orders to leave, it would not be difficult for immigration enforcement agents to find them. The provisional nature of their status requires them to maintain current records with DHS; the agency has their addresses, phone numbers and other personal information.
“Terminating TPS at this time would be inhumane and untenable,” a group of Catholic charity leaders wrote to Duke in a recent letter, arguing that it would “needlessly add large numbers of Hondurans and Salvadorans to the undocumented population in the U.S., lead to family separation, and unnecessarily cause the Department of Homeland Security to expend resources on individuals who are already registered with our government and whose safe return is forestalled by dire humanitarian circumstances.”
If DHS ends the TPS protections, it is expected to grant recipients a grace period of at least six months or more to give them time to prepare for departure.”
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With the Caribbean recovering from storm damage, the US unable to take care of Puerto Rico, and individuals arriving in the US daily in flight from violence and disorder in Central America (one of the most violent and dangerous regions in the entire world) this seems like a boneheaded, politically motivated decision. Hopefully, as Nolan Rappaport has mentioned several times in this blog, Congress and the Administration will be able to work something out for these folks.
If not, most folks aren’t going anywhere soon. Most individuals with TPS do not have final orders of removal from the US. Therefore, they would have to be processed through the US Immigration Courts which currently have a 640,000 case backlog.
The Trump Administration continues to operate in its own world of cruelty, disorder, incompetence, and squandering of Government resources, without regard to either reality or humananitarian factors.
PWS
11-03-17