As Donald Trump prepared to exit the White House the first time, the then-president shielded most Venezuelans in the United States from deportation, agreeing that the situation in their country was “catastrophic.” His Democratic successor agreed: Joe Biden extended the Temporary Protected Status designation to nearly 350,000 Venezuelans who are in the U.S., and the protections were supposed to remain in place through the fall of 2026.
Two weeks into his second term, Trump reversed course, ended the protections and put the Venezuelans at risk for deportation. The community, especially in Florida, was outraged.
“Betrayed. We feel betrayed. More than betrayed. Beyond betrayed,” Adeyls Ferro, executive director of the Venezuelan American Caucus in Doral, Florida, told NBC News.
Two weeks later, the Republican president did it again. NBC News also reported:
The Trump administration on Thursday canceled an extension of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, the latest move by the president targeting the form of immigration relief for people coming from countries facing political upheaval and natural disasters. In June, amid the island’s violent domestic turmoil, the Biden administration announced the temporary immigration protection was extended for Haitians until February 2026.
The protections will now end this August.
“The Trump administration is ripping stability away from half a million Haitians who have built their lives here — children, workers, parents, and neighbors who have become integral to American communities and contributed to our economy,” Beatriz Lopez, co-executive director of the Immigration Hub, an immigrant advocacy organization, said in a statement. “Deporting people to a country plagued by violence and political turmoil is unconscionable, and stripping them of legal status will only force working families into the shadows, inflicting fear in children and their loved ones and leaving industries like healthcare, construction, and hospitality scrambling for workers.”
It’s easy to forget, but in 2016, when Florida was still seen as a battleground state, Trump campaigned in Miami and spent some time at the Little Haiti Cultural Center, stressing the “common values” he shared with Haitian Americans.
“Whether you vote for me or not,” the then-candidate said at the time, “I really want to be your biggest champion.”
A year later, he scrapped temporary status protection for Haitians who were allowed entry to the U.S. following a devastating earthquake in 2010. A year after that, the Republican hosted a White House meeting and referred to Haiti as a “s—hole” country. Six years after that, Trump based part of his 2024 presidential campaign on racist and false claims about Haitian Americans in Ohio eating household pets. And now Trump is again betraying the community he vowed to “champion.” This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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