Groups of exiles from Venezuela asked the President of the United States, Donald Trump, to defer the deportation for at least 18 months of Venezuelan immigrants after the end of Temporary Protected Status (TPS, in English), which protected a total of 600,000 of them.
The Persecuted Political Venezuelans in Exile (VEPPEX) and the Multicultural Association of Voice and Expression Activists (AMAVEX) requested in an open letter to Trump that he issue a deferred enforced departure (DED) to protect compatriots who arrived before October 6 of this year from deportation.
The groups, based in Miami, considered that this measure, which Trump already implemented during his first presidency, in January 2021, “strengthens US foreign policy, by maintaining diplomatic pressure on the Nicolás Maduro regime without compromising its immigration agenda.”
«This humanitarian measure: safeguards lives, avoiding forced returns to conditions of extreme insecurity. “It supports the American economy, preserving the stability of a qualified and productive workforce,” they maintained.
His pronouncement comes after the decision of the United States Supreme Court, which on Friday allowed the Trump Administration to revoke the TPS of Venezuelans, with about half of them having permits that expired in April, and the rest with expiration scheduled for next November.
The largest opposition coalition in Venezuela, grouped in the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), also asked the US Government to review its immigration policy in a “peremptory time” after said decision.
Similar to the PUD, the exiles warned that “the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela persists with extreme severity,” since “political repression, shortages of food and medicine, hyperinflation and the collapse of basic services have forced the displacement of more than seven million people.”
The associations highlighted the effects in Florida, where almost half, 49%, of the nearly 770,000 Venezuelans in the United States reside, the majority arriving since the 2010s, in which Maduro assumed power.
The Trump administration seeks to accelerate the deportation of Venezuelan immigrants while intensifying pressure on the Maduro regime. Since August, US forces claim to have destroyed at least five boats and killed more than 20 people whom they link to “narcoterrorism” from Venezuela.
«We recognize and value your commitment to national security and the rule of law. The DED constitutes a temporary, responsible and compassionate solution, which aligns with the precedents of its own administration and with the humanitarian tradition that distinguishes the United States in the world,” concluded VEPPEX and AMAVEX.
At immediate risk
It should be noted that the United States Supreme Court ruled on Friday in favor of the Donald Trump Administration and allows it to once again revoke the temporary protected status (TPS), putting nearly 300,000 Venezuelan migrants at risk of deportation.
The court ruled, with six votes in favor and three against, in favor of the Department of Homeland Security, and contravened the decision of a California district court that denied the Trump administration the possibility of suspending TPS for some 600,000 immigrants.
The ruling leaves 350,000 Venezuelans at risk of immediate detention and deportation, while another 250,000 Venezuelans will be unprotected on November 7, the date on which protection for that group will expire, while the decision may not affect Haitian TPS beneficiaries for the moment.
“Although positions in the case have changed, the parties’ legal arguments and relative damages have not. “The same result that was agreed upon in May is appropriate,” indicates the majority opinion in reference to a previous decision in the same case that ruled in favor of the Trump government in the same case by emergency means.
Progressive justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson opposed the majority’s decision. In his opinion against the ruling, Jackson said that “I cannot agree with this repetitive, gratuitous and harmful interference in cases that remain pending in lower courts while lives hang in the balance.”
The Government asked the Supreme Court at the end of September to be allowed to withdraw protections against deportation that had been extended by order of a federal judge.
Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) at the University of California Los Angeles, who is part of the plaintiff attorneys, called the ruling “the most extreme sign” that the Supreme Court “has abandoned law for politics.”
The Supreme Court ruling is part of a legal dispute that began against the protection granted by former President Joe Biden in 2021 and which was expanded in 2023 to cover a greater number of immigrants, who entered the United States irregularly.
Last February, the White House announced the end of the protection, since then, lower courts have blocked the measure on several occasions, generating a long appeals process that again seems to conclude with the authorization of the Supreme Court to revoke the protections for more than 600,000 migrants.
For her part, Jéssica Bansal, a lawyer from the National Day Laborers Network (NDLON), which represents Venezuelans, warned that “they will not remain silent in the face of such injustice,” which is why they invite those affected and the general public to the Week of Action to Protect TPS Families from October 6 to 10.
