Haitians, Cubans, Nicaraguans, And Venezuelans At Risk Of Deportation As Trump Revokes Temporary Legal Status

530,000 legal immigrants may be deported.

The Trump administration will officially revoke the temporary legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans in the United States on April 24, a move that could potentially make over half a million migrants vulnerable to deportation.

According to Reuters, although the Trump administration’s move to strip them of their legal status does not take effect until April, it will be published in the Federal Register on March 24, and it represents the latest move in Trump’s aggressive approach to immigration.

CBS News reports that the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will seek to arrest and deport individuals subject to the policy change if they do not leave the country within the next 30 days, but the department also indicated that it could deport individuals who arrived in the United States under the Biden-era program before the 30 days are up. The DHS urges migrants to use the CBP Home smartphone app to self-register for deportation.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the DHS, said in a statement that Biden’s program “loosely vetted” migrants and advocated that rescinding the program is a return to common-sense immigration policy.

“The termination of the CHNV parole programs, and the termination of parole for those who exploited it, is a return to common-sense policies, a return to public safety, and a return to America First,” McLaughlin said.

As The New York Times reports, the Trump administration’s policies have seen officials at the United States border utilize a more aggressive approach beyond illegal immigration, and border patrol agents seem to be targeting legal immigrants who the Trump administration believes to have expressed views that threaten national security or undermine foreign policy.

This has raised concerns for those who believe the administration could be trampling on the right to free speech in the name of enhancing security, as former Customs and Border Protection commissioner Gil Kerlikowske told the outlet.

“Whether it’s speech and criticism, green cards, they’re really taking it to a whole new level…it’s déjà vu all over again on steroids,” he told the Times, in reference to the first Trump administration’s approach to immigration.

According to The Guardian, this aggressive approach to immigration is reflected in the ordeal of a 31-year-old Gambian student at Cornell University, Momodou Taal.

Taal, who holds dual citizenship in Gambia and the United Kingdom, was asked to surrender to immigration officials days after he sued the Trump administration in protest of Trump’s order targeting foreign students who had been accused of “antisemitism.”

Per a statement from one of Taal’s lawyers, whom The Guardian identified as Eric Lee, this development should set off alarms for anyone concerned with freedom and democracy in the United States of America.

“Lawyers at the so-called Justice Department made this request to his attorneys within hours of us having asked the court to stop them from doing precisely that,” Lee told The Guardian. “It’s very difficult to explain how unprecedented this is. This is something that should shock everybody. The most fundamental right in a democracy is the right to seek redress for grievances against the government. God knows where they would send [Taal], simply because he decided to access the federal courts with American citizen colleagues to challenge whether what Trump is doing is legal or not.”