Q24N (EFE) The migrant community in the United States received Monday’s announcement of the cancellation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 70,000 Hondurans and Nicaraguans who have legally resided in the country for more than two decades “like a bucket of cold water.”
“It’s extremely regrettable,” Juan Flores, president of the Honduran immigration group Fundación 15 de Septiembre, told EFE.
Since taking office last January, US President Donald Trump has rescinded TPS for some 600,000 immigrants from seven countries, converting people who fled political crises and natural disasters into undocumented immigrants, despite complying with all legal protocols and requirements, the New York Immigration Coalition detailed this Monday.
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For Hondurans, uncertainty grew in May when they awaited an official announcement on the extension of the program, which was set to expire that month. However, it never arrived, leaving beneficiaries without clear information about their future, Flores explained.
She added that as Hondurans, they also had high expectations following the signing, on June 25, of an immigration agreement between the US and Honduras, which followed a visit to the country by Kristi Noem, the US Secretary of Homeland Security.
That day, Honduran President Xiomara Castro signed the “safe third country” agreement with Noem, through which she committed to receiving asylum seekers from other countries before they reach the U.S. border.
The decision to cancel TPS, which will take effect in 60 days, took its beneficiaries by surprise: approximately 72,000 Hondurans and 4,000 Nicaraguans, according to the Federal Register, who now have until September 6 to seek an alternative to deportation.
According to Flores, conditions in Honduras do not allow for a safe return, information that, she said, is corroborated by the State Department’s own reports, which show that “there is corruption in the political class” of the country.
“The socialism being imposed by President Castro’s government, the persecution of the press, the violence, the lack of employment, and the lack of security,” according to Flores, are reasons that make Honduras eligible for TPS.
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The “Brothers, Come Home” program, a recent Honduran government initiative that offers bonuses and basic assistance to deported migrants without addressing the structural causes such as violence, unemployment, and corruption that forced many to flee, has sent, according to him, “the wrong message to the international community that Honduras is already safe.”
Faced with this situation, Honduran organizations are already preparing to go to court. “We are going to do what was done in 2018. We didn’t want to go to court, but lawsuits are already being prepared,” Flores announced.
TPS is “temporary,” the White House warns
For the administration of US President Donald Trump, TPS is not eternal. “By definition, it is temporary. It is not intended to be a permanent path to residency or citizenship here in the United States,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Monday.
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He emphasized that since it was originally granted to these two countries in 1999 due to the devastation of a hurricane, it didn’t seem very temporary.
However, for the migrant association Alianza Americas, “the arguments used to justify the cancellation are false, malicious, and violate the law that created TPS: to protect people who cannot safely return to their countries of origin.”
Revoking TPS “puts the health, safety, and stability of thousands of families with mixed immigration status at risk,” warned Christian Aguiluz, director of America for All.
Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, lamented that the Trump administration “is actively choosing to strip legal status from hundreds of thousands of people who have lived and worked in the United States for a long time, ruining lives, separating families, and destabilizing communities across the country.”
This new cancellation will force thousands of New York immigrants into legal limbo and risk, he said.
“I will continue to fight this other cruel attack on our immigrant communities,” said Letitia James, attorney general of New York, where thousands of Hondurans and Nicaraguans reside.
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