On Friday, the Trump administration made the announcement that it will stop granting the Temporary Protected Status (TPS). The Secretary of Homeland Security Kiirstjen M. Nielsen specifically targeted Honduras migrants who have lived in the United States since Hurricane Mitch hit the country in 1998.
The official statement found on the Department of Homeland Security website says:
"The Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen M. Nielsen has determined that termination of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for Honduras is required pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act. To allow for an orderly transition, she has determined to delay the effective date of the termination for 18 months. The designation will terminate on January 5, 2020."
According to the statement, this decision was made after "a review of the environmental disaster-related conditions upon which the country's original 1999 TPS designation was based and an assessment of whether those originating conditions continue to exist, as required by statute." However, the government did not take into consideration the gang violence and other civil disturbances continually occurring in the country.
According to a report by CNN—which draws from data found on the US Citizenship and Immigration Services website—this leaves 86,000 Honduran TPS recipients scrambling to find either other grounds to stay, or ultimately leave the country.
This isn't the Trump administration's first big TPS termination announcement. Last month, 9,000 Nepalese migrants were also relieved of their rights to stay. And so other TPS recipients from Haiti, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen are worried with their statuses hanging in the balance.
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