Venezuelans under TPS can apply for refugee status, Kristi Noem says | Trump administration
The United States wants a leader in Venezuela who will be “a partner who understands that we will protect America” to stop drug trafficking and “terrorists coming into our country,” U.S. homeland security secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday.
Noem stated in an interview Fox News Sunday He said the immigration status of Venezuelan citizens living in the United States under temporary protected status (TPS) is part of the administration-wide decision-making process his department will follow.
“Venezuela is freer today than it was yesterday,” Noem said, adding that “every individual covered by TPS has the opportunity to apply for refugee status.” He added: “We need to make sure our programs actually make sense and that we comply with the law.”
Four months ago, Noem ended the 2021 Biden-era TPS designation for Venezuela, which affected more than 250,000 Venezuelans living in the United States, calling it “It is against the national interests of the USAThose covered join approximately 350,000 Venezuelans who were stripped of temporary protected status under an earlier order.
Florida is home to more than half of Venezuelan TPS holders whose legal status and work permits in the United States were revoked under the Trump administration, and many are now fighting a legal battle to remain in the United States.
On Saturday, Elaine Higgins, the Democratic mayor of Miami, called on the Trump administration to restore TPS status to Venezuelan immigrants in the United States, saying the revocation was “reckless, dangerous and wrong.”
“The instability emerging in Venezuela today makes it even clearer that the country is unsafe for people to return. No one should be forced to return to chaos and uncertainty,” Higgins added.
Under the order to remove Venezuela’s TPS status, DHS spokesperson said: Venezuela’s “significant role in driving irregular migration” to the United States “directly” harmed the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Noem said Donald Trump’s message to Delcy Rodríguez, the Venezuelan named by authorities as interim president after Nicolás Maduro was captured by the United States on Saturday, was “very real and very clear: you can either lead or you can get out of the way, because we will not allow you to continue to subvert American influence and our need to have a free country like Venezuela that we can work with instead of dictators who perpetuate crime and drug trafficking.”
