The Trump administration has revoked Temporary Protected Status, or T.P.S., for more than 300,000 Venezuelans in the United States, leaving the population vulnerable to potential deportation in the coming months, according to government documents obtained by The New York Times.
The move signals that President Trump plans to continue a crackdown on the program that began in his first administration, when he sought to terminate the status for migrants from Sudan, El Salvador and Haiti, among others. He was stymied by federal courts that took issue with the way he undid the protections.
“After reviewing country conditions and considering whether permitting Venezuelan nationals covered by the 2023 designation is contrary to the national interest of the United States, in consultation with the appropriate U.S. government agencies, the secretary of homeland security has determined that Venezuela no longer continues to meet the conditions for the 2023 designation,” the notice reads.
During his first term, when Mr. Trump’s administration ended the protections for migrants from El Salvador and Haiti, officials allowed those affected to keep their status for 12 to 18 months before it ended.
This time, the administration has decided to make the changes more immediate. Those under T.P.S. from Venezuela who received the protections in 2023 will lose their temporary status 60 days after the government publishes the termination notice. Republican critics of the program have said that it has been used to allow migrants to stay much longer than intended and that it has transformed from something temporary to a more permanent arrangement.
The notice indicates that more than 300,000 Venezuelans had T.P.S. through April.
Another group of more than 250,000 Venezuelans have protections through September and for now will not be affected, but the decision suggests that they and others under T.P.S. could be in danger of losing their status in the future.
The termination also increases the number of people without any formal immigration status in the United States as Mr. Trump tries to carry out a mass deportation effort. The decision to revoke the protections could face legal challenges from immigrants rights activists who have been expecting such a decision.
The program is meant for migrants who cannot be returned to a country that is facing a natural disaster or conflict of some sort. In recent years, migrants have fled Venezuela as its government has unraveled under President Nicolás Maduro.
During the Biden administration, the program grew dramatically. As of the end of the last year, more than one million people had the status, according to the Congressional Research Service.
It is clear that Mr. Trump aims to change that. The decision this weekend, authorized by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, explained that T.P.S. was no longer necessary because it did not serve the national interest of the United States, according to the administration.
Just a few weeks ago, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, then the homeland security secretary, had found the opposite.
In January, the Biden administration extended the protections for Venezuelans for an extra 18 months, finding that the conditions in their country made such a move necessary. The Trump administration revoked that extension last week.
“Venezuela is experiencing ‘a complex, serious and multidimensional humanitarian crisis,’” the Biden Homeland Security Department wrote, citing an Inter-American Commission on Human Rights report on the country. “The crisis has reportedly disrupted every aspect of life in Venezuela.”
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