The Trump administration has eliminated deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in the United States, making them vulnerable to be sent back to the South American country in 60 days when the protection expires, according to an official from the Department of Homeland Security.

The development comes days after Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced it would eliminate a Biden-era extension that allowed over half-a-million Venezuelans to maintain the protections through October 2026. Noem said she had rolled back the extension because former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had improperly made the extension and that it was up to the Biden administration to make the call. It also comes days after Trump special envoy Richard Grenell met Maduro in Caracas and the president said that Venezuela had agreed to take back deportees. The New York Times first reported the end of the TPS protections for Venezuela.

The revocation of Temporary Protected Status is certain to have profound effects on Florida, which has the largest number of TPS beneficiaries out of any state with over 357,985 recipients. Nearly 60% of them are Venezuelan. Some experts note that besides causing family separations if Venezuelans are deported back to their home country, the revocation could also lead to job loss and business disruptions.

The Biden administration first designated Venezuela for Temporary Protection in March 2021, a decision that was widely celebrated in South Florida. In October 2023, it created a new designation for Venezuela that protected people who had arrived after the 2021 designation. In documents announcing the designation, the Biden administration said that Venezuela faced a “severe humanitarian crisis

There were 505,400 recipients of Temporary Protected Status for Venezuela under both designations as of December 2024, according to the Congressional Research Service. It’s the country with the largest total number of beneficiaries. On Sunday, Noem eliminated the 2023 designation, which covers over 248,000 people, saying that the country no longer meets conditions to have the designation. Some outlets have reported that number could be over 300,000. The move is also a bellwether that the Venezuelans under the 2021 designation, whose protections are set to expire in September, are also highly at risk of losing their TPS.

“After reviewing country conditions and considering whether permitting Venezuelan nationals covered by the 2023 designation is contrary to the national interest of the United States, in consultation with the appropriate U.S. government agencies, the secretary of homeland security has determined that Venezuela no longer continues to meet the conditions for the 2023 designation,” the notice reads, according to the New York Times.

More than 7.8 million Venezuelans have fled their country in recent years to escape what at one point was characterized as the worst humanitarian crises in the region. And now, following the refusal of strongman Nicolás Maduro to recognize that he lost the presidential election in July, millions more are considering leaving the country, according to recent polls.

The country’s oil industry, which once made Venezuela one of the richest countries in the region, has been steadily gutted as expert minds fled, inexperienced leaders were appointed and production crashed, falling from more than three million barrels a day when former President Hugo Chávez took office and launched his socialist revolution in 1999, to the less than 700,000 barrels a day produced today.

In addition, the country suffers from severe fuel shortages. The country’s refineries have seen a dramatic fall, producing only a very small fraction of their 1.3 million barrels-per-day capacity.

While Venezuela still boasts of having the largest oil reserves on the planet, and the migration exodus means that there are significantly fewer mouths to feed, some five million Venezuelans are still going hungry in the country today.

According to the most recent report from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, hunger afflicts 17.6% of Venezuela’s population, a rate that is among the highest in the region.

The revocation of the deportation protections for Venezuela caused indignation and fear in South Florida, the heart of the Venezuelan community in the United States.

Nicole Reinoso, the newly elected councilwoman in Doral — the city home to the largest Venezuelan population in the U.S. — voiced deep concern over the imminent threat facing her community as deportation protections are stripped away.

Reinoso stressed that this decision “regards the ongoing humanitarian and political crisis in Venezuela, putting thousands of individuals at risk.”

She further condemned the move, pointing out that the end of TPS “fails to acknowledge the dangers many Venezuelans would face if forced to return.”

Maureen Porras, Doral’s ViceMayor and immigration attorney said that the country conditions in Venezuela “have not improved and continue to deteriorate in such a way that Venezuela cannot safely return.”

Porras emphasized that ending TPS contradicts the very purpose of the program. “Until the illegitimate Maduro regime is cast out and replaced by the duly elected President Edmundo Gonzalez, Venezuelans will need our support,” she said. “My hope is that the U.S. will take swift action in making this happen.”

The revocation of Temporary Protected Status for Venezuela is the latest executive decision taken by the Trump administration to overhaul the federal immigration system. Since taking office in mid-January, Trump has tried to limit birthright citizenship; declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border; and ended a Biden-era parole process that allowed over 500,000 Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, Haitians, and Cubans to live and work in the United States for two years as long as they had a financial sponsor as well as passed health and background checks. During his last term, Trump tried to end Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, Salvadoreans, Nicaraguans, and nationals from other countries, but was ultimately unsuccessful.

On Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem doubled down on false characterizations that Venezuelan TPS holders are criminals from the notorious gang known as Tren de Aragua, or TDA. No one with a felony conviction or two-plus misdemeanors is eligible for Temporary Protected Status.

On January 19, 2021, during his first term, Trump issued the memorandum of Deferred Enforced Departure for Certain Venezuelans a day before the Biden administration took office, to delay for 18 months the deportation of any Venezuelan nationals present in the U.S. as of that date. He justified the move, saying that “the autocratic government of Nicolás Maduro has consistently violated the sovereign rights of the Venezuelan people. Through force and fraud, the Maduro regime has caused the worst humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere in recent memory.”

Temporary Protected Status “has been abused and it doesn’t have integrity right now. Folks from Venezuela that have come into this country are members of TDA. Venezuela purposely emptied of their prisons, empty about their mental health facilities and sent them to the United States of America. So, we are ending that extension of that program, adding some integrity back into it,” said Noem to “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning before the official elimination of the TPS was public.

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