The Biden administration on Friday comprehensively extended deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of people from Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela, a move that makes it almost impossible for President-elect Donald J. Trump to quickly revoke the benefits once he takes office.
The program, called an extension of Temporary Protected Status, allows immigrants to hold work permits and remain in the country for 18 months after their current protection expires in the spring to avoid deportation. Late last year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken recommended expanding protections in a series of letters.
For decades, Democratic and Republican administrations have designated protections for citizens of countries in turmoil and deemed unsafe to return to. With the outbreak of war in Ukraine and instability in countries such as Venezuela and Haiti, President Biden has expanded the pool of candidates who can achieve this status.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat of New York, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Commission, said: “These designations are rooted in careful review and interagency collaboration to ensure that people affected by environmental disasters and instability receive needed protections while continuing to make meaningful contributions to our communities.
Trump has vowed to end the program, at least for some countries. Immigration advocates have been urging the Biden administration to expand the policy to many of those countries before he takes office.
During his first term, Trump terminated the status of about 400,000 people from El Salvador and other countries, arguing that conditions there had changed and protections were no longer necessary. The move was challenged in court and did not take effect, but he is expected to try again in his second term as part of his pledge to pursue mass deportations.
According to the Congressional Research Service, more than 1 million immigrants from countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East will have temporary protected status as of 2024.
The move makes it legally difficult for Trump to roll back protections for citizens of the four countries, at least until they expire sometime in 2026.
“President Trump will not be able to deport these people any time soon because President Biden has expanded protections for nationals of all of these countries,” said Steve Yale-Lohr, an immigration scholar at Cornell Law School.
“Trump cannot ignore what Congress wrote into law in 1990,” he said.
About 600,000 Venezuelans who currently have that protection will be allowed to renew and stay in the United States until October 2026, and about 232,000 immigrants from El Salvador will be able to do the same. More than 100,000 Ukrainians will also be able to stay in the United States until October 2026.
The program, signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, ensures that foreign citizens already in the United States can remain in the United States if they are unable to safely return to their home country due to natural disasters, armed conflict, or other unrest.
On the campaign trail, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance criticized Haitians who settled and benefited from the program in his native Ohio, calling the program illegal. Haiti has been experiencing political unrest and gang violence, and approximately 200,000 citizens are protected from deportation by TPS until early 2026.
“We will stop granting Temporary Protected Status on a large scale,” Mr. Vance said in October.
Critics argue that the repeated extensions of temporary protection measures are effectively a means to keep people in the country indefinitely, defeating their original intention as a short-term solution.
While the program is nearly permanent for many immigrants, it also highlights the plight of many corners of the world and Congress’s failure to pass legislation to update the U.S. immigration system to accommodate contemporary realities of global migration.
Immigrants from several countries, including El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, have been eligible for protection for more than two decades. Other countries including Ethiopia, Lebanon and Syria have recently been added.
If this status were eliminated, hundreds of thousands of immigrants would immediately become illegal residents of the United States unless they left immediately. Many of them have U.S.-born children and own businesses and jobs in industries that rely on immigrant labor, such as construction, hotels and health care.
In cities like Denver, temporary status has allowed thousands of Venezuelans who arrived from the southern border in the past two years on buses provided by Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to work legally and integrate into the economy.
The city’s mayor, Mike Johnston, said he applauds the Biden administration’s announcement to extend the designation.
“In Denver, people with temporary protected status hold important jobs, contribute to our economy and become essential members of our communities,” he said.
Gonzalo Roa, 43, a Venezuelan beneficiary in Columbus, Ohio, said he has been anxious about the fate of the program.
“It’s good news, it’s being updated,” said Mr. Roa, who works at a car dealership and runs a small restaurant with his wife.
Without such status, Mr. Roa said, he would lose his job at a dealership and his two Venezuelan-born children would be ineligible for college scholarships and other benefits that require legal status.
