The Afghan evacues go to a dentist’s appointment in Charlestown, mass.
Joseph Prezioso / AFP / Getty images
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Joseph Prezioso / AFP / Getty images
The Secretary of the Ministry of Homeland will not renew temporary protections for thousands of Afghans in the United States – preparing them for potential expulsion from May 20.
Temporary protected status, or TPS, is government protection for people against countries suffering from conditions such as war or natural disasters, which cannot return safely. TPS protects them from expulsion and grants them work permits.
More than 9,000 people from Afghanistan were covered by TP in September 2024. The Biden administration first appointed people fleeing from Afghanistan as eligible for TPs in 2022 in response to troubles in the country under the domination of the Taliban, which began after the withdrawal of American troops a year earlier. In 2023, the Biden administration extended TP for Afghans, noting that the current conflict in Afghanistan remained too dangerous to return to the country.
But in a press release on Friday, the deputy secretary of public affairs of the DHS, Tricia McLaughlin, said that during the examination of the conditions in Afghanistan, the secretary of the DHS, Kristi Noem, ended TPS for those who had fled the country.
“The secretary determined that Afghanistan no longer continued to meet the legal requirements for its TPS designation and that it has therefore ended TP for Afghanistan,” said McLaughlin.
She added that the decision was based on an examination of citizenship and immigration services in the United States (USCIS), as well as a consultation between USCIS and the State Department. The DHS also plans to revoke TP for people in Cameroon, the New York Times reported on Friday.
Shawn Vandriver, a military veteran and president of #Afghanevac, a non -profit organization that helps Afghans reinstall themselves in America, said that he had firmly rejected the statements of the Trump administration under which the conditions in Afghanistan did not meet TPS standards.
“The conditions on the ground have not improved-they have worsened,” he said. “The Afghans who were invited here, who have built lives here, are now informed that they do not matter. It is cruel, it is chaotic, and that undermines all that America said when we have promised not to leave our allies behind.”
Tens of thousands of Afghans have become targets of the Taliban by working for the United States government during the American war in Afghanistan, the longest in American history. Over the years, Afghans who have helped to help the American war effort and their families have been mainly able to reinstall themselves in the United States thanks to the special immigrant visa program and the admission program for American refugees. But there are a number of Afghans who are still in the process of obtaining their SIV and TPS status offer them a layer of stability, according to Andrew Sullivan, the executive director of a person left, who strives to support the beneficiaries of the SIV.
“Many of these allies have completed the substantial and precious service required for American national security, but are still in processing for a SIV due to documents and connections lost in chaos of American withdrawal,” said Sullivan. “This decision puts our allies with harmful uncertainty.”
Since President Trump has returned to work, TPS has been among the objectives of the aggressive overhaul of his immigration policy of his administration.
Last month, the DHS also tried to revoke the TP for the Venezuelans. This decision has since been disputed and was interrupted by a federal judge on March 31. In his order, the American district judge Edward Chen in San Francisco said that the action of the Trump administration “would inflict irreparable damage” to these TPS beneficiaries. He also argued that the government had not identified “real damage” in the continuous TPS for the Venezuelans.
