TRUMP MASS DEPORTATIONS COULD INCLUDE SPECIAL PROTECTED STATUS IMMIGRANTS FROM AFGHANISTAN, HAITI, UKRAINE, IRAQ AND MORE
By Miram Raftery
January 15, 2025 (San Diego) – President-elect Donald Trump has pledged “mass deportations” of 11 million undocumented immigrants, most of whom do not have criminal backgrounds. But many people are unaware that he has also threatened to revoke temporary protected status (TPS) from some immigrants who are here legally.
San Diego’s East County is home to many people who came here with TPS status, including Iraqis and Afghans who worked for the U.S. government, such as translators for our military, as well as Somalis and Sudanese displaced by civil unrest, and Ukrainians displaced by the Russian invasion.
Currently, 17 nations have TPS designations which protect immigrants such as Afghans who helped the U.S. military, Ukrainians, Syrians and Sudanese with war-torn homelands, and Haitians displaced by earthquakes and gang violence after the assassination of the nation’s president. The list also includes immigrants from Burma, Cameroon, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Lebanon, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, Venezuela, and Yemen.
Asked if he would revoke temporary protected status for TPS holders such as Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, Trump told News Nation,” Absolutely, I’d revoke it.”
Vice President-elect J.D. Vance has characterized TPS holders as “illegal aliens” adding, “We’re going to stop doing mass grants of Temporary Protected Status,” the New York Times reports.
Trump and Vance falsely claimed Haitians in Springfield were eating cats and dogs. They have refused to recant those claims, even though Springfield’s Police Chief said there have been no complaints of Haitians eating pets.
Revoking or failing to extend Temporary Protected Status could lead to deportation of many immigrants back to countries that are dangerous due to war or natural disasters.
During Trump’s first administration, he tried to scrap the TPS program for immigrants in the U.S. from a half dozen nations with predominantly black, Hispanic, or Asian residents. The American Civil Liberties Union sued and got a temporary injunction; that case was pending before the U.S. Supreme Court when Joe Biden took office and opted to keep the TPS program, so the case was never heard. With a new conservative majority, including three justices appointed by Trump, however, a similar suit might well be decided in favor of axing TPS status for some or all recipients.
Trump also alienated many in the Iraqi Chaldean Christian Community in 2017, when his Department of Homeland Security identified some 1600 Iraqi nationals for removal, of whom 800 had committed no crimes. Others were decades-old, the Guardian newspaper in London reported.
Of those with criminal records, some had committed only minor offenses, such as a youth convicted of marijuana possession whose record was expunged when he became an adult, yet he was still among 300 Iraqis detained and threatened with deportation despite being a Catholic with cross tattoos, which could put him at risk of torture or death in a Muslim-ruled nation at a time when ISIS terrorists were murdering religious minorities.
One Iraqi man who did have a serious criminal history, also suffering from schizophrenia, died after he was deported to Iraq, after reportedly being beaten and denied insulin to treat his diabetes. Like many Iraqis in the U.S., he spoke no Arabic and had spent most of his life in America. The deportations of Iraqis were ongoing despite a “do not travel” advisory for Americans seeking to visit Iraq due to the dangers there including terrorism and armed conflict.
Mass deportations of TPS recipients here legally, as well as undocumented immigrants, could rip families apart since children born here could remain, while one or both parents could be deported.
Trump has also threatened to deport people sympathetic to Hamas, ostensibly to make college campuses safe. Could this mean deporting Palestinian immigrants and other students protesting the Gaza war?
He has previously shown animosity towards Muslims, notably with his ban on Muslim immigrants during COVID, which courts struck down as unconstitutional.
The question of who might be deported under the next Trump presidency is particularly relevant in communities such as El Cajon, where political leaders are wrestling with whether or not to publicly affirm an intent to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. At yesterday's meeting, after numerous Latino leaders voiced concerns, the Council asked staff to revise the ordinnance; it is expected to be consder at the next El Cajon Council meeting on January 28.
While some believe such a resolution would only support deportation of people who committed crimes, what if the Trump administration defines “crime” to include merely crossing the border illegally decades ago and seeks to deport all undocumented people, even “dreamers” brought here as children? What if efforts go even further, with federal authorities asking local police to round up people whose TPS status is revoked, such as translators who helped our military and would face death if returned home? Or people who fled violence and genocide in some African nations?
Another issue for taxpayers is the cost of mass deportations. The American Immigration Council has estimated that to deport all undocumented immigrants in the U.S. would cost nearly a trillion dollars.
USA Today reports that Trump could use emergency and executive powers to bypass existing protections for immigrants. He could activate powers from decades-old provisions once used to detain Japanese, German and Italians in the U.S. during World War II. He could deploy the military and National Guard members to round up immigrants, push local police forces to cooperate in those efforts, and shift financial resources from other agencies to fund mass deportations.
A key obstacle to Trump’s mass deportation goals is that most nations have said they will refuse to accept immigrants. If no other nation will take them, that could mean immigrants rounded up could languish for years in detention camps. Based on conditions in detention camps during Trump’s first term of office, some immigrants’ lives could be at risk from diseases, stress, or other health-related concerns.
Currently, Congress provides funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain 41,500 people daily. But the American Immigration Council estimates that deporting even 1 million people a year, as Vance has proposed, would require increasing that 24-fold—a highly costly proposition. If Congress balks at such steep funding, what would then happen to detained immigrants?
Meanwhile, immigrant communities across the U.S. are permeated with fear over the potential to be stopped at any time over the next four years, ripped from their homes, jobs and families, and potentially deported to a homeland they fled due to dangers that still remain.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/15/us/trump-immigrants-temporary-protected-status.html
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/temporary-protected-status-overview
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/17/iraqi-christians-face-deportation-conned-trump
https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-7-part-f-chapter-10
https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/temporary-protected-status
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/07/iraqi-man-dies-deportation-trump-administration-1643512