The Department of Homeland Security has moved to terminate a form of humanitarian relief for migrants from Nicaragua and Honduras residing in the United States, according to an announcement from the department and draft notices published in the Federal Register.
The Trump administration has stripped protections from multiple nationalities in the US who were protected from deportation and allowed to temporarily live in the country, arguing that conditions at home no longer justified those protections. The termination of the relief, known as Temporary Protected Status, has prompted legal challenges nationwide — and has been blocked by federal judges in some instances.
The latest move would affect approximately 72,000 migrants from Honduras and 4,000 from Nicaragua, according to government estimates.
Honduras was initially designated for TPS in 1999 based on an environmental disaster, according to a draft notice in the Federal Register. Nicaragua was similarly designated for TPS in 1999 because of an environmental disaster.
“Temporary Protected Status was designed to be just that — temporary,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement. “It is clear that the Government of Honduras has taken all of the necessary steps to overcome the impacts of Hurricane Mitch, almost 27 years ago.”
TPS applies to people who would face extreme hardship if forced to return to homelands devastated by armed conflict or natural disasters, therefore the protections are limited to people already in the United States. Past Republican and Democratic administrations have designated the protections, though some Republicans have argued the relief shouldn’t have been extended multiple times.
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