South Florida’s Venezuelan community outraged by protected status revocation

South Florida’s Venezuelan community outraged by protected status revocation


MIAMIVenezuelans living in South Florida are upset after the Trump administration revoked one of two temporary protected status designations for Venezuela, alleging it allowed members of the Tren de Aragua members to enter the U.S.

Several Venezuelan organizations gathered at El Arepazo in Doral to address their concerns and send a message to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem – “We are not criminals.”

Over the weekend, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem revoked one of two Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations for Venezuela, which the U.S. government had previously determined was too dangerous to allow Venezuelans to return to their homeland safely.

The revocation affects an estimated 350,000 Venezuelans covered under a 2023 TPS designation. They will lose their work permits and deportation protections two months after Noem’s decision is officially published.They will be eligible for deportation beginning April 2.

Venezuelans enrolled in TPS under an earlier 2021 designation will continue to have that status through September, though those protections could also be phased out. 

Noem suggested policies like TPS encourage illegal immigration, saying extensions of the policy could attract people to the U.S. border. She also cited challenges some communities in the U.S. have faced in absorbing migrants in recent years and the arrival of members of the Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua.

Those who gathered in Doral were outraged. 

“TPS holders are people who are living a legal life in the United States. If 300,000 people lose their status on their TPS, many businesses are going to suffer. I’m not even talking about the humanitarian toll that they already said, that we cannot go back to Venezuela. We are not here because we came as tourists, we are here because we got kicked out of our country because for over 20 years there is a cruel dictator in Venezuela,” said Venezuelan activist Adelys Ferro. 

The organizations announced they would be taking legal actions within weeks in an effort to stop the deportations.

Nearly 8 million people have left Venezuela as part of the largest exodus recorded in the Western Hemisphere, according to the United Nations. While millions of Venezuelans have settled in other South American countries like Colombia, hundreds of thousands traveled to the U.S. southern border during former President Joe Biden’s administration.



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