How Trump's Policies Are Turning Legal Immigrants Into Illegals
More than a million people who were legally admitted to the country through various programs are now considered illegally in the U.S., according to the Trump administration. Here's why NBC News.
Photo: FabioConcetta | Dreamstime.com
Flo, 31, moved from Haiti to the United States in hopes of a new life. She got a job as a cashier in Miami after entering the country legally through a sponsorship program. But now President Donald Trump has declared that she and more than a million others like her have no legal right to be in the country.
Trump, seeking to go down in history as the president who carried out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history, acknowledged that the Biden administration’s program that allowed Flo and hundreds of thousands of other immigrants to enter the U.S. legally was, in fact, illegal. Flo asked that her full name not be used for fear of being targeted for deportation.
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Trump has promised to rid the country of people here illegally, but the new criteria are likely to significantly increase the number of illegal immigrants.
“You look at the flood of Trump policies that are deliberately stripping people of their legal status, moving them from legal status to illegal status so they can be deported,” said Angela Kelly, counsel for the American Immigration Lawyers Association and a former senior immigration adviser at the Department of Homeland Security during the Biden administration.
“The Trump administration is deliberately creating a new category of illegal immigrants by literally stripping them of their legal status and work authorization,” said Karen Tamlin, founder and director of the Justice Action Center.
By stripping Flo and others like her of their legal status, Trump has dramatically expanded the number of people who can be expeditiously deported, helping his administration move closer to its goal of getting rid of a million immigrants each year.
The U.S. Supreme Court on May 30 allowed the administration to deny more than 500 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela the right to temporarily live and work in the United States under the CHNV humanitarian parole program.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem issued a notice revoking humanitarian parole and work authorization for CHNV participants and urging them to immediately "leave" the United States on their own.
Immigration groups dispute the current administration’s assertion that Biden’s program is illegal. Guerlene Joseph, executive director and founder of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, said hundreds of thousands of participants in the program trusted the U.S. government and went through rigorous vetting to gain legal status.
"Now they're just having the ground pulled out from under their feet," she noted.
The Trump administration has argued that the CHNV humanitarian parole did not do enough to ensure border security and complicated domestic enforcement. After the Supreme Court ruling, the White House said that participants in the program were “poorly vetted” and allowed to compete for U.S. jobs.
White House press secretary Abigail Jackson said: “President Trump promised to restore sanity to America’s immigration system and end Biden’s dangerous policies that allowed countless unvetted aliens into the United States. Ending the CHNV humanitarian parole program is an important part of delivering on that promise. Humanitarian parole is a temporary measure granted in exceptional cases for humanitarian reasons or the public good. It is not a path to permanent residency or citizenship. This program has been abused by bad actors, undermining American workers, and fueling further illegal immigration.”
Steve Camarota, director of research at the Center for the Study of Immigration, an immigration-restriction think tank, said he supports the administration’s actions. Continuing the previous humanitarian parole programs “has caused a crisis at the border” under Biden.
Critics of Trump’s policies point out that while the administration has focused on deportations, it has failed to expand the number of visas or other mechanisms to legally bring in workers or to legalize immigrants who have spent years trying to change their immigration status. Business and agricultural leaders have been pushing for more visas and legalization pathways to expand the number of workers needed in various industries and to maintain the labor force as the U.S. birth rate declines.
“We don’t see any effort to improve the legal avenues. In fact, the situation has only gotten worse,” said Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy.
Trump has been vague about legal pathways, he said, suggesting, for example, that some farm and hospitality workers could temporarily leave and return if their employers vouched for them. The administration had suspended raids on those workers, but the Department of Homeland Security recently reversed that decision.
In addition, Anderson noted, travel bans have been imposed from a number of countries. Haitians are subject to a near-total ban on travel to the United States, including temporary and immigrant visas.
In Haiti, Flo helped young people and studied psychology at university. But she saw no chance for herself or her young daughter to build a normal life there.
The Haitian woman lived in the rural Fort-Liberté area in the north of the country, where violence was lower than in Port-au-Prince, but gangs had already begun to infiltrate.
"I felt like I was just existing. There was no future - it was impossible to build anything, even save up for a car. And for some people things were even worse - no food, no housing... There really is no future," she concluded.
Her aunt sponsored Flo's entry into the United States, allowing her to work and support her daughter and family in Haiti.
"It was a kind of second chance for me. I am a person who loves to work, I have a strong will. It was a new experience and a new beginning," Flo said.
Rise in number of illegal immigrants
Because the CHNV humanitarian parole program was temporary (maximum two years), legally vetted immigrants like Flo had to find other ways to stay in the country, such as applying for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or asylum.
But these paths can be complicated, too. In addition to eliminating humanitarian parole for hundreds of thousands of CHNV participants, the Trump administration is seeking to end TPS for 350 Venezuelans.
Also at risk are nearly 300 people from Afghanistan, Cameroon and Haiti who received TPS, which provides protection from deportation and work authorization for six to 000 months with the possibility of renewal.
More than 900 people who entered the U.S. under the Biden administration’s CBP One program have also been ordered to leave the country. Many of them are seeking asylum or TPS status. Some have already been arrested and sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison.
The administration has gone further, announcing its intention to strip U.S. citizenship from anyone who does not have at least one U.S. citizen or permanent resident parent. According to the Migration Policy Institute, ending birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants or other temporary residents would lead to a sharp increase in the number of illegal immigrants, both now and in the future.
Trump’s plan to end citizenship rights will increase the number of undocumented immigrants by 2,7 million by 2045 and by 5,4 million by 2075, according to the Migration Policy Institute and the University of Pennsylvania. Every year for the next 50 years, about 255 children born in the U.S. will begin life without U.S. citizenship.
Temporary, not permanent
Camarota assured that the Trump administration has learned the lessons of its first term: “You can win in court, but you have to start now.”
He said the Humanitarian Password and TPS programs were originally intended to be temporary, but they often became permanent: “And that’s what we’re trying to fix.” Ultimately, the goal is to encourage people to leave the country.
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Faced with the prospect of returning home, five Haitians who came to the United States through the CHNV program and were sponsored by Reeve Breus of Miami have moved to Canada. Some plan to go to Chile, others to Mexico or the Virgin Islands.
When the CHNV program opened, Breus and nine others formed a “sponsoring circle” to help families individually. They used their own money to clothe, feed, and house those they sponsored while they looked for work and settled in. They also raised an emergency fund. In total, their circle sponsored 30 people.
“These people do not want to leave their homeland,” Breus concluded. “It is a question of survival. Many of them do not want to give up, because giving up means dying or finding themselves in a situation where they simply have nothing to live on.”
Flo, who applied for Temporary Protected Status, now sees no other option but to move to another country.
“I will never stay here illegally,” Flo concluded. “And I will definitely not go back to Haiti.”
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