HIAS Denounces Termination of TPS for Nicaragua, Six Month Extension for Honduras

SILVER SPRING, Md.—HIAS strongly condemns the Trump administration’s decision to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Nicaragua. The administration was unable to decide on TPS for Honduras, resulting in a six month extension for nationals of that country. TPS is a temporary immigration status that allows U.S. resident foreign nationals to remain and work in the United States if they come from U.S. government-designated countries that have been afflicted by acute and temporary natural disasters or armed conflict.  

This decision requires Nicaraguans to self-deport or risk forcible removal by January 5, 2019, affecting more than 2,500 individuals who have been in the United States for an average of 20 years. The fate of 57,000 Hondurans, many of whom have lived in the United States for an average of 22 years and are parents to 53,500 U.S. citizen children, will be decided on July 5, 2018.

In response to the Department of Homeland Security’s announcement, Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of HIAS, the global Jewish nonprofit that protects refugees, remarked that “we must continue to call on Congress to protect not only Nicaraguan and Honduran TPS holders, but also others who could soon be forced to leave their families and return to countries that are ill equipped to accept them. If the administration will not reverse its decision on Nicaragua and extend TPS for other protected countries, Congress must pass bipartisan legislation to permanently protect the hundreds of thousands of TPS holders living in the United States.”

There are approximately 330,000 TPS holders in the U.S. from ten countries, but according to reports from inside the State Department, 195,000 Salvadorans, 50,000 Haitians, 57,000 Hondurans, and 2,550 Nicaraguans “no longer deserve protection from deportation.”

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