Fresh off Donald Trump’s recent decision to rescind former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the administration is now considering removing protections for hundreds of thousands more immigrants.
According to CNN, a move similar to Trump’s recent DACA decision could be on the horizon, which could lead to nearly a half a million immigrants losing their protections under the law.
More from the report:
At issue is “temporary protected status,” a provision of immigration law that allows the government to grant temporary work authorizations and protection from deportation to immigrants, including otherwise undocumented ones, from certain countries where life remains dangerous. Conditions that could merit the status include armed conflict and civil war, natural disasters, epidemics and “other extraordinary and temporary conditions.”
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The status is intended to be temporary, but many of the designated countries have had their crises continue for years, resulting in certain groups’ protections lasting for decades.
In the next six months, the Trump administration will weigh whether to extend the status for several countries whose immigrants have lived in the United States for as long as 20 years — with a decision to end that status potentially upending their lives. All told, more than 440,000 people in the United States are protected by the program.
CNN reported that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has made a decision on the matter and will be releasing it “shortly.”
This comes after Trump’s initial announcement that he was rolling back the Obama-era Dreamer protections for 890,000 young undocumented immigrants, which received a swift and bipartisan backlash.
Even some Republicans quickly threw their support behind legislation that would clean up Trump’s mess and enact protections for the hundreds of thousands of Dreamers now at risk.
Trump himself clearly took notice of the outrage, leading him to make a half-hearted walk back on his Twitter account.
“Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA,” he tweeted last week. “If they can’t, I will revisit this issue!”
As the new reporting indicates, though, Trump is hardly softening his anti-immigrant stance. If anything, he is doubling down on it – and hundreds of thousands more immigrants may be in his crosshairs.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
