(The Center Square) – After decades of extensions, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will not renew Temporary Protected Status for Honduran and Nicaraguan citizens residing in the U.S., per new agency announcements.
The decision is estimated to impact at least 72,000 Hondurans and 4,000 Nicaraguans currently in the U.S., who will have to return to their respective countries within 60 days.
TPS for the two countries expired July 5. The U.S. has consecutively renewed the typically 18-month designation for both countries since 1999. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said “improved conditions” in Honduras facilitated the agency’s Monday decision.
“Temporary Protected Status was designed to be just that – temporary,” Noem said. “It is clear that the Government of Honduras has taken all of the necessary steps to overcome the impacts of Hurricane Mitch, almost 27 years ago. Honduran citizens can safely return home, and DHS is here to help facilitate their voluntary return.”
According to Noem, the Honduran government will provide economic, food and job training assistance programs for returning refugees. DHS will also cover the cost of returnees’ plane tickets and give $1,000 bonuses to help with resettlement.
DHS will offer the same benefits to returning Nicaraguans, after determining that conditions in the Central American country “no longer meet the TPS statutory requirements.”
“Temporary Protected Status was never meant to last a quarter of a century,” a DHS spokesperson said. “The impacts of a natural disaster impacting Nicaragua in 1999 no longer exist. The environmental situation has improved enough that it is safe enough for Nicaraguan citizens to return home.”
While DHS gave Nicaragua TPS because of natural disasters, human rights advocates have argued that TPS for the country should remain due to its authoritarian political environment.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega withdrew the country from the United Nations Human Rights Council in March after a U.N. report documented widespread human rights violations and religious persecution of Catholic clergy.
Environmental disasters, ongoing armed conflicts, and other “extraordinary and temporary conditions” in a country allow the DHS secretary to bestow TPS.
U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., who has introduced legislation offering TPS recipients paths to citizenship, condemned the Monday decisions as “unconscionable.”
“TPS recipients from Nicaragua and Honduras fled devastation more than 20 years ago, and they have since built their lives in the U.S. – raising children, working and contributing to our economy, and enriching our communities,” Rosen said. “Ending protections for law-abiding TPS recipients without comprehensive immigration reform that gives them a pathway to citizenship is cruel and reckless.”
The agency’s decision follows previous revoking of TPS for Haitians and Venezuelans, as The Center Square reported.
