Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto urges the Biden administration to extend protections for Dreamers and immigrants with Temporary Protected Status during a Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024, press conference. From left to right are Andrea Flores of the immigration advocacy group FWD.us and Sens. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico and Alex Padilla of California. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — Jose Cabrera took off work from his landscaping job to join three Latino Democratic senators for a Wednesday press conference urging the Biden administration to renew protected statuses, like his, before the return of President-elect Donald Trump to the White House.
Cabrera, of Montgomery County, Maryland, has lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years, and is protected from deportation and allowed work permits. His home country of El Salvador is deemed too dangerous to return, giving him a designation of Temporary Protected Status, or TPS.
He and other immigrants living legally in the United States fear if they lose their protected status, they will be swept up as Trump implements his campaign promise of mass deportations.
Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Alex Padilla of California and Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico are pressing the Biden administration to redesignate TPS for nationals from Nicaragua and El Salvador and to also designate TPS for people from Ecuador.
TPS for El Salvador ends in March and TPS for Nicaragua ends in July, after Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
“We know the incoming administration is going to try to implement chaotic immigration policies that tear our families apart,” Cortez Masto said.
The members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus also stressed that the White House should direct the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s immigration agency to speed up renewal applications for those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.
“It’s time for this administration to ensure that we can renew their DACA status now, before they come under threat from the Trump administration,” Cortez Masto said.
The White House could not be immediately reached for comment.
Mass deportations threat
The senators stressed that the Biden administration should take action, given Trump’s vow to enact mass deportations, targeting the millions of immigrants without legal status. Deportations could easily include those with TPS if their status is not renewed.
TPS designations can last six, 12 or 18 months before they are renewed and cover more than 1 million immigrants. The status does not offer a pathway to citizenship.
So far, 17 countries have TPS designation and it’s been used in instances like Ukrainians fleeing from Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Andrea Flores, the vice president on immigration policy and campaigns at the immigration advocacy group FWD.us, said that Biden should use TPS to protect those holding the status from the incoming Trump administration.
During the first Trump administration, the former president tried to end TPS for Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Sudan, but the courts blocked those attempts in 2018.
“Those people will now lose legal status in the next administration. Those people will be subject to mass deportations, and they’ll be returned to a country where they will be guaranteed to be persecuted,” Flores said.
Padilla and Luján stressed that mass deportations would not only harm communities but the U.S. economy. The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing Tuesday on the ramifications of mass deportations at which Republicans indicated they will be moving ahead quickly once Trump takes office.
“Mass deportations will jeopardize the safety and security of millions of mixed-status families, sowing deep (mis)trust and fear in the communities we represent, and without a doubt, destabilize the United States economy,” Luján said.
There are roughly 4 million mixed-status families, meaning family members with different immigration statuses.
Padilla said that those who have TPS and DACA all work in crucial U.S. industries.
“By taking work authorization for hundreds of thousands of workers away, we’re gutting our own workforce,” he said.
DACA fate
Trump, who tried to end DACA during his first administration, said during a sit-down interview with NBC on Sunday that he would “work with the Democrats on a plan” to keep those recipients in the U.S., but he did not elaborate on any details.
The program is currently waiting for a federal court to decide its legal fate.
Thomas A. Saenz, the president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which along with the state of New Jersey is defending DACA in the courts, said Dreamers should still continue to apply for renewals “and not fear renewing.”
“They should continue to seek renewal even perhaps earlier than they otherwise might to try to extend the period under which they are protected,” he said in an interview with States Newsroom.
Cortez Masto said she is always willing to work to protect Dreamers, but is skeptical about Trump’s comments.
“The last time he said that, and we brought him a bipartisan bill to do something to protect our Dreamers, he killed it,” she said.
Cortez Masto was referring to a 2018 bipartisan deal that Sens. Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota, and Angus King, independent of Maine, struck that would have granted DACA recipients a pathway to citizenship, along with funding for a border wall.
‘The government has all of our information’
Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, deputy director of federal advocacy at the immigrant advocacy group United We Dream, said in an interview with States Newsroom that she’s concerned about Immigration and Customs Enforcement having access to information on DACA applicants through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that processes legal immigration paperwork.
“We’re really worried that will just give ICE a list of people that they can go then (and) knock on their doors,” she said.
Macedo do Nascimento, who is a DACA recipient herself, said her organization is asking the Biden administration to create a firewall between USCIS databases and DHS agencies like ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“The government has all of our information,” she said. “They could potentially come get us at any point. That’s the worst case scenario.”