The Trump administration is ending the temporary status for nearly 80,000 Hondurans and Nicaraguans that has allowed them to live and work in the U.S. for a quarter of a century after a devastating hurricane hit Central America, according to federal government notices - a move that comes as the White House pushes to make more immigrants in the U.S. eligible for deportation.
The notices are part of a wider effort by the current administration to make good on campaign promises to carry out mass deportations of immigrants. It's doing this by going after people in the country illegally or those who've committed crimes that make them eligible for deportation but also by removing protections from hundreds of thousands of people, many admitted under the Biden administration.
Temporary Protected Status is a temporary protection that can be granted by the Homeland Security secretary to people of various nationalities who are in the United States, which prevents them from being deported and allows them to work. The Trump administration has aggressively been seeking to remove the protection, thus making more people eligible for removal.
Administration says conditions have changed
The Department of Homeland Security said Monday in the Federal Register - in a notice set to become official on Tuesday - that Secretary Kristi Noem had reviewed the country conditions in Honduras and Nicaragua. She concluded the situations there had improved enough since the initial decision in 1999 that people currently protected by those temporary designations could return home.