By Ted Hesson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem cut the duration of deportation protections for 600,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. as the Trump administration searches for ways to ramp up removals of Venezuelan nationals, she said on Wednesday.
Noem told Fox News that she rescinded the previous administration’s move to grant Venezuelans in the U.S. an additional 18 months of deportation relief and access to work permits through the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program, opening the possibility the protections could expire later this year.
At the same time, she said she was working with Secretary of State Marco Rubio to find ways to deport Venezuelans and other migrants from nations that limit the number of deportees they accept. When asked about the possibility of sending migrants to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, she said that was being evaluated by the administration.
Guantanamo houses a migrant facility – separate from the high-security U.S. prison – that has been used on occasion for decades, including to house Haitians and Cubans picked up at sea.
President Donald Trump, a Republican, took office on Jan. 20 vowing to crack down on illegal immigration and humanitarian programs he says go beyond the intent of U.S. law. Trump tried to end most TPS enrollment during his first term but was stymied by federal courts.
TPS is available to people whose home country has experienced a natural disaster, armed conflict or other extraordinary event. Former President Joe Biden, a Democrat, greatly expanded the program and it now covers more than 1 million people from 17 nations. Many of those migrants – including some in the U.S. for decades – could be vulnerable to deportation if they lose the status.
Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued the Venezuela extension shortly before Trump took office, although existing protections for Venezuelans did not expire until April for some enrollees and September for others. He also extended TPS for people from El Salvador, Ukraine and Sudan.
Noem told Fox News that the Trump administration did not want to be bound by the last-minute Mayorkas decision to extend protections and that they wanted to root out alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA).
“We are going to follow the process, evaluate all of these individuals that are in our country, including the Venezuelans that are here and members of TdA,” she said.
Noem must decide by Saturday whether to terminate TPS for Venezuelans whose protections expire in April, according to a copy of her revocation notice reviewed by Reuters.
Venezuelans living under the TPS program are nervous, several people involved with immigration issues for Venezuelans in the U.S. told Reuters.
Many migrants depend entirely on their TPS status to be able to work legally, said Laura Gatica, an Ohio notary who helps migrants prepare their immigration forms and who herself immigrated from Venezuela. She knows immigrants working at “big companies, medium-sized companies, hotels, Amazon, elder-care centers, hospitals,” she said.
NEGOTIATIONS WITH OTHER NATIONS
Noem said Rubio was working late into the night to find ways to convince other nations to accept deported migrants.
“I was talking to him on the phone at one o’clock in the morning, and he was up and still discussing negotiations with other countries,” Noem said. “And the president, clearly, will exercise all the authority and power that he has to make these countries take them back.”
The United States and Venezuela have a fraught recent history marked by broken diplomatic relations, sanctions and accusations of criminal activity and coup-plotting.
Venezuela and Washington’s long-time Cold War foe Cuba have only accepted limited numbers of deportees in recent years, even as hundreds of thousands of migrants from those nations entered illegally.
Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez urged the Trump administration to forgo negotiations with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and send deportees to a third country in comments to the Washington Post published on Wednesday.
“It’s in the United States’ best interest to follow a strategy that helps ensure Nicolas Maduro is no longer in power,” he said.
The U.S. military said on Tuesday it would use a base in Aurora, Colorado, to detain migrants. The city figured prominently during Trump’s presidential campaign last year when he said it had been taken over by Venezuelan gang members, an assertion city officials refuted.
Trump pledged in October to launch a nationwide “Operation Aurora” to target alleged gang members, but has not yet taken that step.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Matt Spetalnick in Washington, Mircely Guanipa in Maracay, Venezuela and Tibisay Romero in Valencia, Venezuela; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Rosalba O’Brien)
