By Shannon Feerick-Hillenbrand '26
Guest Writer, Brown University
With immigration as one of the top issues for voters in the recent election, Donald Trump’s ability to convince voters that the Biden Administration welcomed undocumented immigrants across the southern border with open arms contributed heavily to his victory. Immigration provided a scapegoat for Trump to capture many voters’ frustrations about the economy. (1) During the first presidential debate, Trump made a now infamous remark about Haitian immigrants living in Springfield, Ohio “eating the dogs” in the context of the Biden Administration granting these immigrants Temporary Protected Status (TPS). (2) Following that remark, Trump and JD Vance repeatedly claimed these migrants were here illegally despite having been granted TPS. Trump’s rhetoric and promise to gut the program signal his intent to reinstate longstanding biases in American immigration policy; this reality presents an ominous future for all migrants who benefit from initiatives like TPS. (3)
The rhetoric used during the 2024 election campaign season created a widespread misunderstanding of TPS, prompting undeserved resentment toward immigrants protected by the program. Temporary Protected Status was established in the Immigration Act of 1990, signed into law by George H.W. Bush, and is managed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). (4) TPS aims to protect migrants whose home countries are uninhabitable due to imminent threats such as war, natural disaster, or unrest. (5) The Secretary of Homeland Security holds the authority to review the safety conditions of a country and designate TPS accordingly. Qualifying migrants can apply for protection if they are eligible according to criteria set by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). (6) If they qualify, migrants are granted temporary status to live and work in the U.S. for up to 18 months, a period which is indefinitely renewable by DHS if it is determined that conditions have not improved. (7) Historically, the program has had bipartisan support and has been used by both Democrat and Republican administrations to protect migrants when deportation is untenable.
Under the Biden administration, the program was expanded to account for natural disasters and rising global conflict. Biden’s expansion of the program to include an estimated 490,000 immigrants from Venezuela, Cameroon, Myanmar, and Syria, has garnered widespread dissent among opponents of liberal immigration policy. While this increase is substantial, the total number of people eligible for TPS in the United States is only 1.2 million, a relatively small proportion of the 21.6 million noncitizen immigrants living here. (8) Biden proceeded further than simply extending the program to encompass more countries by asking Congress to pass a bill supplying migrants with TPS a path to lawful permanent residence—provided that they have lived in the U.S. continuously since 2017 and have passed a criminal background check. (9) The proposal was added to H.R. 3194, the U.S. Citizenship Act, but it did not make it out of committee. (10) Despite the failure of this bill, Biden’s proactive support of the TPS program in the context of rising pressure at the southern border put an easy target on his administration for its immigration policy, contributing to a sound Trump victory.
Now that Trump is set to take back the White House in January, the future of the migrants who currently enjoy TPS is in limbo. Trump has directly signaled that his mass deportation plans will include immigrants with TPS; following his debate comments about Haitian immigrants and TPS, he stated in an interview conducted by NewsMax that he’d “revoke [TPS] and … bring them back to their home country.” (11) This has devastating implications for many families in Trump’s home state of Florida where 295,720 TPS recipients live, most from Venezuela and Haiti. These countries have not improved in condition since they were granted TPS status, so deporting them puts these people in grave danger.
Examining Trump’s actions in his first term can help predict how he may dismantle the program during his second term. Trump attempted to eliminate the program in 2016 for El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Sudan but was sued in federal court by the ACLU. (12) Despite winning a preliminary injunction, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Trump administration, ruling that the Court did not have the authority to review terminations of TPS designations. The case made by the plaintiffs was that the Trump administration had expressed “racial animus” towards non-white immigrants, which motivated the decision to terminate TPS. (13) The Court agreed that Trump had expressed anti-immigrant sentiments but held that there was no direct connection between those statements and his decision to terminate TPS designations. (14) Nonetheless, the ruling was ultimately immaterial since it was decided in 2021 when Biden took office and signaled support for the program.
The outcome of that ruling is no longer insignificant as it leaves the door open for Trump to terminate TPS designations as soon as he returns to the White House. Unfortunately, unless Trump explicitly makes a racially motivated argument for his decision to revoke TPS designations, doing so is well within his legal authority given that the DHS, an executive agency, exclusively runs the program. The designations expire after 18 months unless they are renewed, and they can be terminated at any time with 60 days of notice. (15) TPS designations for El Salvador expire in March and for Sudan, Ukraine, and Venezuela in April, just months after Trump takes office. (16) Based on his current promises, Trump will likely allow these designations to expire at a minimum, or possibly terminate all of them when he takes office. Choosing to do so would leave 1.2 million people at risk of deportation in addition to the 11.7 million undocumented immigrants he has promised to deport. (17)
In all likelihood, Trump’s efforts to deport these immigrants will eventually be successful, though logistics may be an obstacle to achieving this swiftly. Even if Trump is unable to carry out mass deportations immediately or at all, his rhetoric has already had huge impacts on migrant communities. With several months until Trump takes office, his consistent use of racist dog whistles to stir up anti-immigrant attitudes has ostracized communities who enjoy TPS, making them feel unwelcome and unsafe in the United States. The Haitians living in Springfield, perhaps the most targeted group during this campaign cycle, have faced fierce threats of violence by their fellow residents, to the point where many have fled the city. (18) When Trump takes office, this trend will likely intensify as fears of deportation rise and even legal immigrants continue to face xenophobic backlash from their communities.
The decades-long program used to protect migrants facing conflict in their home countries was used as a talking point in the election and was at least partially responsible for the outcome. The consequences of Trump’s re-election are about to come to fruition for immigrants currently enjoying Temporary Protected Status. Trump’s first term should have been a lesson for people skeptical of his willingness to enact nativist immigration policies. Unfortunately, the impact of Trump’s actions and rhetoric did not convince voters that xenophobic posturing hampers the American promise of equal protection. Instead, they have punched his ticket back to the White House with the hope that he’ll deliver on his vow to kick millions of working and tax-paying immigrants out of the country. Even a non-partisan program like TPS no longer appears benign if protecting immigrants facing volatile situations back home from deportation has become political. The stance of the new administration reveals the nativist sentiments that have been allowed to fester in America, ushering in a return to inhumane immigration policies.
Endnotes
Miguel Jiménez, “Trump Wins Votes from Working-Class Discontent over Inflation and Immigration,” EL PAÍS English, November 7, 2024, https://english.elpais.com/usa/elections/2024-11-07/trump-wins-votes-from-working-class-discontent-over-inflation-and-immigration.html.
Mike Catalini, Julie Carr Smyth, and Bruce Shipkowski “Trump Campaign Falsely Accused Immigrants in Ohio of Eating Pets,” AP News, September 11, 2024. https://apnews.com/article/haitian-immigrants-vance-trump-ohio-6e4a47c52b23ae2c802d216369512ca5.
Miriam Jordan, “Trump Targets Temporary Protected Status for Immigrants from Troubled Countries,” The New York Times, November 15, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/15/us/trump-immigrants-temporary-protected-status.html.
Diana Roy and Claire Klobucista, “What Is Temporary Protected Status?,” Council on Foreign Relations, September 21, 2023, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-temporary-protected-status.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Mohamad Moslimani, “How Temporary Protected Status Has Expanded under the Biden Administration,” Pew Research Center, March 29, 2024, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/29/how-temporary-protected-status-has-expanded-under-the-biden-administration/.
“Text - H.R.3194 - 118th Congress (2023-2024): U.S. Citizenship Act,” Congress.gov, 2023, https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/3194/text.
Ibid.
Rachel Dobkin, “Donald Trump’s Plan for Immigrants Criticized in His Own Backyard,” Newsweek, November 16, 2024, https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trumps-plan-immigrants-criticized-his-own-backyard-1986906.
Miriam Jordan, “Trump Immigration Targets: Ukrainians, Venezuelans, Haitians,Trump Immigration Targets: Ukrainians, Venezuelans, Haitians,” New York Times, November 15, 2024.
Tanvi Misra, “US Court Allows Trump to Phase out Temporary Protected Status - Roll Call,” Roll Call, September 14, 2020, https://rollcall.com/2020/09/14/temporary-protected-status-court-ruling/.
Ibid.
PBS News, “Trump Could Target Temporary Protections That More than 1 Million Migrants in the U.S. Rely On,” PBS News, November 14, 2024, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-could-target-temporary-protections-that-more-than-1-million-migrants-in-the-u-s-rely-on.
Ibid.
Robert Warren, “US Undocumented Population Increased to 11.7 Million in July 2023: Provisional CMS Estimates Derived from CPS Data - the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS),” The Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS), September 5, 2024, https://cmsny.org/us-undocumented-population-increased-in-july-2023-warren-090624/.
Stephen Starr, “Haitian Immigrants Flee Springfield, Ohio, in Droves after Trump Election Win,” the Guardian (The Guardian, November 17, 2024), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/17/haitian-immigrants-springfield-ohio-trump-election.
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