Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost. (Photo by Justin Merriman/Getty Images)
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost asked the Trump administration to review protections for migrants from distressed countries. Now that the explicitly anti-immigrant administration has removed those protections from 350,000 Venezuelans, Yost’s office isn’t responding to questions.
Last week, Yost and 17 other Republican attorneys general asked incoming Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to review temporary protected status designations allowing some from 17 distressed countries to stay in the United States because of the danger of returning home.
Yost noted that some of those countries had had temporary protected status designations for decades — and he claimed that this allowed some migrants to stay even after it was “safe for them to return home.”
However, Yost didn’t name a single such country to which he thought it was safe for migrants to return. When asked if he could, his spokeswoman said that wasn’t the Ohio attorney general’s job.
Created by Congress in 1990, temporary protected status designations run for 18 months, giving migrants the right to work while they’re under the protections. Presidential administrations can renew the designations indefinitely, and Yost and the other attorneys general cited such renewals when they called for the review.
On Wednesday, Noem published an order terminating temporary protected status for the 350,000 Venezuelans who were granted it in October 2023. It will take effect 60 days from then.
The order cited the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as a reason why it’s in the national interest to revoke protections. But it didn’t provide any evidence that gang members enjoyed protected status.
Temporary protections for 250,000 more Venezuelans are set to expire in September if Noem doesn’t renew them. Yost’s office didn’t respond when asked if he supported ending the protections.
Regardless of whether Venezuelan gang members enjoy protected status in any numbers in the United States, it’s likely that people will face them upon returning home.
Estimated to have the highest crime rate in the world, Venezuela has been impoverished for the past decade as a result of economic mismanagement by anti-democratic socialists Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro.
The country is said to be dominated by mega-gangs that engage in drug trafficking, extortion, kidnappings, and contract killings. And the U.S. Justice Department has charged the Maduro government itself with narco-terrorism, corruption, drug trafficking, and other criminal charges.
It’s unclear whether Yost considers Venezuela to be safe, but the U.S. State Department had this human rights assessment of the country to which the Trump administration is ordering 350,000 to return:
It practices “unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings; enforced disappearance; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by security forces; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention by security forces; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; political prisoners or detainees; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; punishment of family members for alleged offenses by a relative; unlawful recruitment or use of children by illegal armed groups; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom, including violence or threats of violence against journalists, unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists, censorship, and enforcement of or threat to enforce criminal libel laws to limit expression; serious restrictions on internet freedom; substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association…”
Not only does ending protected status endanger those who might be sent back, it will exact a cost on the U.S. economy, said Jennie Murray, President and CEO of the National Immigration Forum.
“Eliminating protections for Venezuelans who are already here means that our workforce will lose hundreds of thousands of people who are currently contributing and working legally,” Murray said in an email. “This not only will affect these individuals, but it will add uncertainty for American businesses that hired them.”
Advocates for immigrants say that ending protections for Venezuelans stokes fears among the nearly 1 million from all countries who have temporary protected status in the United States that they might be next.
They include Haitians in Springfield who were terrorized last summer after Trump and now-Vice President J.D. Vance spread the racist lie that they were stealing and eating their neighbors’ pets. That sparked dozens of bomb threats — including at elementary schools — and reports of physical attacks on Haitian migrants.
Yost joined the pile-on.
Lynn Tramonte, founder of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, called Yost’s conduct shameful and told Venezuelans they have the support of a broad swath of Ohioans.
“Just so we’re clear, the Ohio attorney general and the (U.S. Homeland Security secretary) want to remove legal status from people who currently have it so they can try to deport them,” she said in a text message. “They are making more people who currently pay taxes undocumented. You can’t ‘make it make sense’ because it doesn’t. For each and every Venezuelan person who may be fearful of losing immigration status, we want you to know that millions of Ohioans stand with you and are glad that you are here. You are part of what makes the state work. Shame on AG Yost for continuing to play politics with people’s lives.”
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