US activists say that Trump’s measures criminalize Venezuelan immigrants.
When the President of the United States Donald Trump took his second term, citizens of 17 countries had a temporary protection status (TPS) in the United States.
The list included countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia and Cameroon. Among the Latin American were El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
So far, Trump has put an end to migratory protection only for one of these countries: Venezuela.
This decision will force 348,202 Venezuelani, who obtained TPS in 2023, to abandon the United States until April 7, unless they obtain another migratory status to legalize or present asylum petitions so that they are not expelled.
The announcement caused indignation among the Venezuelans residing in the United States. Days before, they had already received the news of the suspension of words from the Trump administration, which is another humanitarian permit that benefited thousands of Venezuelani during the previous government of Joe Biden (2021-2025).
“We are not only betrayed, we are used,” said the Venezuelan-American activist Adelry Ferro, director of Venezuelalan Calus, Florida, based in Miami.
On the morning of Monday (3/2), Ferro participated in a press conference of Venezuelan activists to condemn the elimination of the TPS. The event took place in El Arena, an emblematic restaurant in Doral, the municipality of the County of Miami-Dead which hosts the largest community of Venezuelani in the south of Florida.
“The commitment of the campaign of President Trump was the first against criminals, then against non -documents and now against immigrants, regardless of their status,” he complained.
“What will happen to those who cannot return to Venezuela, but can’t be able to stay in the United States without a good job?”
“How will they do when they lose insurance coverage or cannot bring their children to school, fear of being expelled?”
The press conference has not only attracted activists and journalists, but also beneficiaries of TPS. They sought a guide to prevent them from being added to 11 million immigrants without document or legal status in the United States, which are the goal of Donald Trump’s mass deportation policy.
“I don’t know what I will do, I thought I had done things well,” he told the BBC News World (the Spanish service of the BBC) a Venezuelan with TPS who requested anonymity. He saw the press conference as a listener.
“I never thought I felt persecuted in the United States as in Venezuela,” he complains.
‘Notable improvements’
At the end of the press conference, all in the restaurant wondered what conditions they would have improved in Venezuela – a country that the United States government qualifies as a “dictatorship” and with those who were hostile, especially during the first term of Donald Trump (2017- 2021).
The granting of TPS depends on the secretary of the National Security Department, which guarantees protection to foreigners who are at risk when they return to their countries of origin.
The law on immigration and nationality of the United States provides four scenarios that justify TPS: armed conflicts, natural catastrophes, limitations in the country of origin to receive their “temporary and extraordinary” companions or conditions that prevent the return of citizens safely .
The decision of the National Secretary to National Security Kristi Noem, published in the American Official Gazette, recognizes that there are “certain conditions” that justify the TPS in Venezuela.
But he claims that there are “significant improvements in various areas, such as economy, public health and crime, which allow these citizens to return safely to their country of origin”.
Three months earlier, the then secretary of national security of the Biden government, Alejandro Mayorkas, concluded exactly the opposite.
He announced the extension of the TPS because Venezuela “continues to face a serious humanitarian emergency due to a political and economic crisis, as well as violations of human rights and abuses, high levels of crime and violence”.
The decision was published in October last year. He indicated that all these factors have compromised “access to food, medicine, medical assistance, water, electricity and fuel, leading to high levels of poverty”.
Over the past ten years, 7.89 million people have emigrated from Venezuela. It is the greatest exodus in the history of the region, according to the United Nations, caused by the country’s political and economic crisis.
At least 85% of these Venezuelans settled in Latin America, but another thousand entered the United States during the Biden government through the border with Mexico. This situation was condemned by Trump and other republican leaders.
Before participating in the press conference in El Arena, the Mayra Marchán activist said he had received a message from a knowledge in Venezuela, asking if he had already sent a surgical kit for the intervention of his daughter, an 18 -year -old girl who It suffers from brain cancer.
“If we can’t take it, they will not be able to manage it,” he says. “It is to this country that we will return 300,000 people”.
During the second half of last year, the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro recognized that he arrested 2,000 people during protests against the electoral results.
Maduro has been proclaimed winner, but the opposition claims the triumph of the candidate Edmundo González, according to the 80% data of the voting report.
“Most of these Venezuelans who have gone away, running away from an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, today he feels the anguish of political persecution within the United States,” said the Venezuelan activist Helene Villaonga, president of the organization Amavex.
Many residents of Doral believed that they would be more protected with Donald Trump in the American presidency and that the political changes that they want to see in Venezuela would become more practicable.
“In Venezuela, the situation has not improved, on the contrary,” says Villalonga. “We do not understand what the changes are in the circumstances for the Venezuelans to return to the country”.
Among an unexpected approach to the Maduro government, Trump was able to expel, on Monday (10/2), 190 Venezuelani. They landed at the Simón BolÃvar international airport, near the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, in two airplanes.
After receiving Trump’s emissary Richard Gnelell in Caracas and released six American prisoners, Maduro has secured his will to receive deported flights if the White House raises penalties against his government. He said that the “first step” was given to an incidental agenda.
The deportation of migrants is one of the main Trump policies. To perform it, he has to stop agreements so that the countries of origin receive flights.
But the American secretary of state Marco Rubio has excluded that the visit of the special advance to Caracas constitutes a demonstration of political recognition to the government of Maduro.
“There are no conversations to recognize mature,” said Rubio during his visit to Central America in early February. “In fact, we don’t recognize it.”
The shadow of the Aragua train
Kristi’s decision -making notes show that allowing the TPS Venezuelan beneficiaries to remain in the contrary “national interests”.
In an interview with the American Fox News Channel, the secretary claimed that the decision of his predecessor to extend the TPS to the Venezuelans, “made them stay here, violating our laws for another 18 months and we arrested it”.
“We will follow a process, we will evaluate all these people in our country, including the members of the TDA,” he said, with reference to the Aragua train, the organized criminal faction created in a prison of the Venezuelan state.
Adells Ferro stressed that, according to the United States National Security Department, only 600 people were identified as suspects to maintain bonds with the Aragua train in the United States.
“And none of them have Tps,” he told journalists.
“Do you know why? Why a person who has TPS must put the fingerprints on a biometric record, pass through a revision of their criminal records and demonstrate where they live.”
“We are marked and we become targets because of the way they see us,” he said Iron.
“The growing stigmatization of which we are victims of us,” Helene Villalonga warned. “Of course there is a group called Aragua Train, but we cannot allow them to generalize and associate the entire Venezuelan community with those delinquents.”
Source: Terra
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