Trump Administration Moves to End Protections for Venezuelans in the U.S.

The Trump administration has ended Temporary Protected Status, or T.P.S., for more than 300,000 Venezuelans in the United States, leaving the population vulnerable to potential deportation in the coming months, according to government documents obtained by The New York Times.

The move, President Trump’s first to remove such protections in his second term, signals that he plans to continue a crackdown on the program that began in his first administration, when he sought to terminate the status for migrants from Sudan, El Salvador and Haiti, among others. He was stymied by federal courts that took issue with the way he undid the protections.

The decision is also the latest in a series of Trump administration moves to tighten the immigration system, including pausing programs that allow migrants to enter through previously legal pathways and freezing the refugee system.

When the first Trump administration ended the protections for migrants from El Salvador and Haiti, officials allowed those affected to keep their status for 12 to 18 months before it ended.

This time, the administration has decided to make the changes more immediate. Those under T.P.S. from Venezuela who received the protections in 2023 will lose their temporary status 60 days after the government publishes the termination notice.

Republican critics of the program have said that it has been used to allow migrants to stay much longer than intended and that it has transformed from something temporary to a more permanent arrangement. Vice President JD Vance slammed the program in October and hinted at a new approach.

“We’re going to stop doing mass grants of Temporary Protected Status,” he said then.

The notice indicates that more than 300,000 Venezuelans had T.P.S. through April. Another group of more than 250,000 Venezuelans have protections through September and for now will not be affected, but the decision suggests that they and others under T.P.S. could be in danger of losing their status in the future.

Immigrant rights activists criticized the decision on Sunday.

“The Trump administration’s attempt to undo the Biden administration’s T.P.S. extension is plainly illegal,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, who helps lead the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the U.C.L.A. School of Law. “The T.P.S. statute makes clear that terminations can only occur at the end of an extension; it does not permit do-overs.”

The termination also increases the number of people without any formal immigration status in the United States as Mr. Trump tries to carry out a mass deportation effort. The decision to revoke the protections could face legal challenges from immigrant rights activists who have been expecting such a decision.

The program is meant for migrants who cannot be returned to a country that is facing a natural disaster or conflict of some sort. In recent years, migrants have fled Venezuela as its government has unraveled under President Nicolás Maduro. The Biden administration long struggled to remove migrants to Venezuela, as the country did not allow deportation flights. On Saturday, President Trump indicated on social media that the Venezuelan government had reversed course on that decision, though officials in Caracas had not publicly confirmed such an arrangement.

“Venezuela has agreed to receive, back into their Country, all Venezuela illegal aliens who were encamped in the U.S., including gang members of Tren de Aragua,” he wrote. “Venezuela has further agreed to supply the transportation back. We are in the process of removing record numbers of illegal aliens from all Countries, and all Countries have agreed to accept these illegal aliens back.”

During the past few years, the T.P.S. program grew dramatically. As of the end of the last year, more than one million people had the status, according to the Congressional Research Service.

It is clear that Mr. Trump aims to change that. The decision this weekend, authorized by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, explained that T.P.S. was no longer necessary because it did not serve the national interest of the United States, according to the notice obtained by The Times.

Just a few weeks ago, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, then the homeland security secretary, had found the opposite.

In January, the Biden administration extended the protections for Venezuelans for an extra 18 months — a move the Trump administration quickly revoked — finding that the conditions in their country made such a move necessary.

“Venezuela is experiencing ‘a complex, serious and multidimensional humanitarian crisis,’” the Biden Homeland Security Department wrote, citing an Inter-American Commission on Human Rights report on the country. “The crisis has reportedly disrupted every aspect of life in Venezuela.”

Democrats in Congress had called on Mr. Trump to keep the status in place.

“Given Venezuela’s increased instability, repression and lack of safety, and within all applicable rules and regulations, we demand more information on why the department has made this decision,” congressional Democrats wrote in a letter to the Homeland Security Department last week. “We also strongly urge you to re-extend the T.P.S. designation for Venezuela so that we can continue to provide safety and support to Venezuelans fleeing the political, economic and humanitarian crisis currently plaguing their home.”