Many thousands of immigrants living in the US who came from certain countries regarded as risky or dangerous are at the mercy of US judges and the Trump administration’s agenda to slash their work authorization and protection from deportation.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has announced the termination of temporary protected status (TPS) for citizens of seven of the 15 countries previously designated for shelter under this legal umbrella – with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) controversially citing improved conditions in some of those places.
The seven countries are Afghanistan, Haiti, Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua, Nepal and Cameroon, plunging many TPS holders in those US immigrant communities into confusion and fear and prompting groups of individuals and advocacy organizations to head for the courts to shield them, with varying degrees of success so far.
On Wednesday, a federal appeals court sided with the Trump administration and halted, for now, a lower court’s order that had kept in place temporary protections for 60,000 migrants from Central America and Nepal.
This means that the Republican administration can move toward removing an estimated 7,000 people from Nepal whose TPS designations expired on 5 August. The TPS designations and legal status of 51,000 Hondurans and 3,000 Nicaraguans are set to expire on 8 September, at which point they will become eligible for removal from the US.
The National TPS Alliance group had sued, alleging that the administration’s plan was unlawful.
In the case of Honduras and Nicaragua, some of their nationals in the US have held TPS status for over 25 years, since Hurricane Mitch caused devastating damage to both countries in the late 90s.
In July, the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said it was safe to return people to Nicaragua and Honduras.
However, the United Nations said in a report that the Nicaraguan regime of co-presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo “has deliberately transformed the country into an authoritarian state where opposition voices are silenced and the population faces persecution and economic retaliation”.
And in April the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said: “The Nicaraguan regime is an enemy of humanity.”
Meanwhile, Honduras has the highest rate of femicides in Latin America, according to Human Rights Watch, with approximately seven femicides per 100,000 women, and across the nation the UN says 1.6 million people live with urgent humanitarian needs out of a population of 7 million. More than 50,000 Hondurans in the US are TPS holders.
Nepal was initially designated for TPS in 2015 after an earthquake disrupted and displaced millions. Noem said that “there are notable improvements in environmental disaster preparedness and response capacity”. Earlier this year, amid economic and political instability in the country, Nepal was experiencing violent clashes between civilians and police.
The Guardian has previously reported on how the Trump administration has deported Bhutanese Nepalis who fled ethnic cleansing and are now living in a refugee camp.
Meanwhile, last month, an appellate court authorized the Trump administration to end TPS for more than 8,000 Afghans and 5,000 Cameroonians. In the case of the Afghan immigrant population in the US, many, including some who assisted US forces in Afghanistan before the botched withdrawal by the military in 2021, are already at risk of deportation.
Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch, says anyone deported to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan could face persecution or torture.
“For example, on the deportation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan, we were able to document cases that, especially former government employees, once they’re back in Afghanistan, they’re picked up by the authorities and they’re being arbitrarily detained and tortured; that’s a real risk for anyone who’s deported back to Afghanistan,” said Abbasi.
She added: “The Taliban have not only taken away the fundamental rights of women, they have taken women’s autonomy as well. I’ve spoken to women in Afghanistan who have told me that they feel they are living in a prison. The US knows that Afghanistan is not a safe country.”
The Department of Homeland Security has cited rising tourism as a factor in its assessment that Afghans can be deported back there, with the US Federal Register’s item about revoking TPS for Afghans saying: “Tourism to Afghanistan has increased, as the rates of kidnappings have reduced.”
However, the US has also issued a travel warning for Afghanistan, advising Americans not to visit the country due to civil unrest, crime, terrorism and risk of wrongful detention. The international criminal court issued arrest warrants for two Taliban leaders, accused of crimes against humanity for the persecution of women and girls.
An elderly British couple detained without charge after years of living in Afghanistan are in danger of dying in custody, relatives have warned. And Afghans living in or with the prospect of returning to Afghanistan who are known or even just suspected by the Taliban of having assisted US or British forces there could be in mortal danger.
The US Congress established TPS as part of the Immigration Act of 1990, signed by the then president, George HW Bush.
The estimated 1 million TPS holders in the US overall have not only used the program’s benefits to support themselves in the US workplace, but also to contribute an estimated $21bn annually to the economy, while paying $5.2bn in taxes, according to the advocacy group Fwd.us.
The Trump administration has also announced it will end TPS for Haitian immigrants living in the US legally under the scheme. The US embassy in Haiti warns people not to travel to the Caribbean nation, citing kidnapping and civil unrest, as does the US state department website.
While Noem acknowledged that conditions in Haiti remained dire, she said it was not in the national interest of the US to continue the TPS program for Haitians.
The poorest country in the western hemisphere, Haiti has been engulfed in political tumult since the assassination of the then president, Jovenel Moïse, in 2021. The descent for the already-unstable country into further crisis has displaced 1.3 million Haitians, according to the International Organization for Migration, and local authorities estimate that 5.7 million face food insecurity.
An estimated 340,000 Haitians in the US who are currently covered by TPS – a designation initially made in 2010 following the devastating earthquake that year – will no longer have this protection from deportation after 2 September.
Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, an immigrant support group in the US, said some of the people already deported to Haiti “are just dropped off” and “their family relatives don’t know what happened to them”.
“The termination of TPS is a complete unwillingness to acknowledge the humanity of these immigrants, whom many of them have been in the country for over 15 years. Many of them have children who were born and raised here,” Jozef said.
“The entire Black immigrant community doesn’t fit the agenda, or are not deemed dignified enough, or not deemed worthy enough of the protection that those people need. We are at a point where they don’t care how long they have been here, that they have paid their taxes, that they have businesses.”
Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, remains largely under gang control and armed conflict has rendered the city inaccessible from both the north and south.
Violent groups dominate the city center and surrounding areas, with only two districts spared, where camps for internally displaced people have multiplied, sheltering tens of thousands who have fled violence.
In this parlous condition, the prospect of mass deportations from the US is alarming local organizations already struggling to cope.
“Where will families whose homes have been burned down go?” Katia Bonté, coordinator of the Support Group for Returnees and Refugees (GARR) in Haiti, asked.
Her organization already operates along the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, assisting people expelled daily back to Haiti under a crackdown by the Dominican government launched last October.
Bonté fears a similar wave from the US would overwhelm already fragile systems.
“Deported Haitians won’t be able to return to their families or communities. I visit the displacement camps. I see how people survive. It’s inhumane – the impact would be devastating,” she said, adding: “There’s not much hope left. It feels like we’re on our own, and no one is coming to help.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is reportedly eyeing Honduras and Nicaragua as places to send people who are from neither country originally but are being deported from the US, and has done a deal with Rwanda and, on Wednesday, with Uganda.
There was uproar from many directions when the US government deported, without due process, a group of people from a variety of countries to South Sudan and Eswatini this summer.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
