On Friday, the Biden administration broadly extended deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of people from Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela, making it nearly impossible for President-elect Donald J. Trump to strip benefits immediately after taking office.
Extension of Temporary Protected Status, as the program is called, allows immigrants to stay in the country with work authorization and protection from deportation for an additional 18 months after their current protection expires in the spring. Late last year, Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken recommended expanding protections in a series of letters.
For decades, Democratic and Republican administrations have established protections for citizens of countries in crisis and considered unsafe to return to. As war broke out in Ukraine and instability gripped countries like Venezuela and Haiti, President Biden expanded who could receive status.
“These designations are based on careful consideration and interagency cooperation to provide those affected by environmental disasters and instability with the protection they need while continuing to contribute meaningfully to our communities,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Mr Trump has derided the program and vowed to end it, at least for certain countries. Immigrant advocates had been urging the Biden administration to extend it for many of those countries before taking office.
During his first term, Mr. Trump terminated the status of nearly 400,000 people from El Salvador and other countries and faced legal challenges afterward.
According to the Congressional Research Service, by 2024, more than one million migrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East will have Temporary Protected Status.
The move makes it legally difficult for Mr. Trump to withdraw protections for citizens of the four countries until at least one term expires in 2026.
“Since President Biden has expanded protections for citizens of all these countries, President Trump will not be able to deport them any time soon,” said Steve Yale-Loehr, 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 protection will be allowed to renew and remain in the United States by October 2026, and about 232,000 immigrants from El Salvador will be able to do so. More than 100,000 Ukrainians will be able to stay in the United States until August 2026. 1,900 people from Sudan will also be allowed to renew their status.
The program was signed into law by President George HW Bush to ensure that foreign nationals in the United States can stay in the country if it is not safe for them to return home due to a natural disaster, armed conflict or other insurgency. .
On the campaign trail, Vice President JD Vance called the program illegal while criticizing Haitians living in his home state of Ohio and benefiting from it. Haiti faces political turmoil and gang violence, and nearly 200,000 citizens are protected from removal under TPS until early 2026.
“We will end the mass granting of Temporary Protected Status,” Mr. Vance said in October.
Critics have argued that temporary protections have been repeatedly extended and serve as a de facto tool to allow people to stay in the country indefinitely, instead of being intended to be a short-term solution.
While the program is permanent for many immigrants, it underscores how uneasy many corners of the world are and how Congress has not enacted legislation to adapt the U.S. immigration system to the realities of modern global migration.
Including immigrants from several countries El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, have been entitled to protection for more than twenty years. Other countries like Ethiopia, Lebanon and Syria have recently been added.
Beneficiary Gonzalo Roa, 43, of Venezuela, said he was worried about the fate of the program.
“It's great news that it's being renewed,” said Mr. Roa, who lives in Columbus, Ohio. He works at a car dealership and runs a small restaurant with his wife.
Without temporary status, Mr. Roa said, he would lose his job at the dealership and his two Venezuelan-born children would not be able to receive college scholarships and other benefits that require legal status.