From his first day in office, President Trump made clear that part of his immigration agenda was to strip legal protections from people who currently qualify for them, rendering them deportable as “illegal immigrants.” In his first weeks, the administration has made a few opening moves in that effort, while leaving the door open to future action. The result has been confusion and dread, as communities (and attorneys) try to figure out what the current policies are and when the other shoe will drop.
This confusion is particularly acute when it comes to Venezuelan immigrants, since so many of them have been affected – or may be affected – by actions the administration has already taken or threatened to take. The administration declared that Venezuelans who received Temporary Protected Status in 2023 will lose it in April 2025, while those who received it in 2021 may lose it later this year.
Meanwhile, Venezuelans and others who arrived under the Biden-era CHNV parole program remain in limbo: no new applications are being accepted and Trump administration may be planning to revoke existing grants of parole, but how this might happen and when remain unclear.
Here’s what we know.
TPS for Venezuela: Up to 350,000 Will Lose Protections in April, and 243,000 More May Lose Them In September
Venezuelans with TPS fall into two groups: those who were here in 2021 when President Biden initially designated the country for TPS, and those who applied after it was redesignated for TPS in 2023.
In his final weeks in office, Biden announced that TPS for both groups would be extended until fall 2026. However, the Trump administration acted quickly to reverse those decisions. As a result, they reverted to the original timeline: with the 2023 TPS designation set to expire this April unless extended, and the 2021 designation set to expire (or be extended) in September.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has already announced that the 2023 designation will not be extended, meaning that those Venezuelans will lose their legal protections, and the work permits associated with them, as of April 7. The Federal Register notice notes that as many as 348,000 people may lose legal status under this decision. (The notice contradicts itself, calling 348,000 both the number of people who were estimated to be eligible for TPS in 2023 and the number of people currently enrolled; if it’s merely the eligible population, it’s likely that the number who actually have TPS is smaller.)
DHS has not yet announced a decision about whether to extend the 2021 designation before its beneficiaries (an estimated 243,000 people as of 2023) lose their work permits and legal status on September 10. The law requires DHS to make an announcement about their future at least 60 days before the expiration date.
CHNV Parole: No New Grants and a Very Murky Future
The administration has promised to “end” the parole program for Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan immigrants started under the Biden administration. Immediately upon arriving in office, the CHNV program stopped accepting new applications for two-year grants of parole. However, hundreds of thousands of people whose parole grants were issued under Biden are still living legally in the United States— for now.
A January memo from Benjamine Huffman said that if ICE agents encounter someone who would be “amenable to” expedited removal – meaning that they have been in the U.S. for less than two years – but has parole, they should consider putting them in expedited removal proceedings anyway.
“This may include steps to terminate…any active parole status,” the memo noted, but what those steps might be – and whether ICE would be able to terminate a parole grant issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services without the agency’s participation – were not spelled out.
Because grants of parole under CHNV were valid for only two years and no renewals were granted, that paragraph – vague as it is – describes all current CHNV beneficiaries.
Making matters even more confusing, reports have indicated that the Trump administration intends to try to strip all CHNV beneficiaries of their current parole grants – leaving them vulnerable to deportation and unable to work legally, since their work permits are valid if their parole is valid. The law requires the government to notify an individual if their parole is being terminated, and it remains unclear how the administration would do that: whether it would send individual notices of termination to beneficiaries, for example, or whether it would simply issue a Federal Register notice and assume everyone got the message.
Furthermore, it has been weeks since the initial reports about this intended move. It was supposed to happen imminently, but as of February 14, no action has been taken.
All of this makes it extremely difficult for people with CHNV parole, their loved ones, and their employers to know what the future holds. It is possible, for example, that an employer who doesn’t closely follow the Federal Register may not find out that an employee lost their permission to work for weeks following the change. It is also fully unclear what someone with CHNV parole should do if they encounter an ICE agent in their community, since having parole may or may not protect them from deportation now.
Hundreds of thousands of people are in limbo as a result. According to the most recent DHS statistics (from November), a total of 36,130 Cubans entered after January 2024 with CHNV parole grants. (Those who entered before January are eligible to apply for green cards under the Cuban Adjustment Act.) 33,960 Haitians arrived on CHNV parole after May 2024, when Haiti was last redesignated for TPS, and 62,240 Venezuelans entered after the 2023 TPS redesignation. 92,870 Nicaraguans had been admitted on CHNV in the last 2 years.
For now, we can say that people with Temporary Protected Status definitely have legal protections and work permits for as long as their current TPS grants last. We know that Venezuelans who first registered for TPS under the 2023 designation will lose those protections in April, meaning that if they have not applied for another form of legal status, they risk becoming deportable.
And we know that, as of right now, people with CHNV parole are still eligible to live and work legally in the United States unless something else happens to them. However, that last assurance can be given only day by day.
FILED UNDER: CHNV, TPS
