World Relief Laments Termination of Temporary Protected Status for Hundreds of Thousands of Venezuelans First Offered Protection by President Trump

Contact: wr@pinkston.co

(Baltimore, MD) September 3, 2025 – Today, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of individuals from Venezuela who have been present in the United States since at least March 2021. This decision will take effect 60 days after the notice is formally published, at which point these Venezuelans will lose their ability to work lawfully and be at risk of deportation, unless they have otherwise qualified to stay lawfully in the United States.

World Relief laments this decision, as we have announcements of revocations of Temporary Protected Status for a separate group of individuals from Venezuela who arrived in the United States later and for individuals from Haiti, Afghanistan, Honduras, Cameroon and other countries, some of which have not taken effect as originally announced due to judicial orders. Additionally, more than one million individuals allowed to lawfully enter the country with humanitarian parole have had their legal protections terminated in recent months.

“The administration says that they are deporting immigrants in the country illegally — but many Americans have missed just how many of the individuals now facing detention and deportation were here completely lawfully until the administration cancelled their TPS or humanitarian parole,” said Myal Greene, president of World Relief. “Tragically, that puts people at risk of deportation to countries like Venezuela facing profound humanitarian crises, sending them into the hands of a dictatorial government that the U.S. does not recognize as legitimate.”

While the initial termination of TPS for Venezuelans announced in February impacted Venezuelans who arrived during the Biden administration, this new announcement primarily impacts individuals who arrived during or prior to the first Trump administration. In fact, most of the estimated 260,000 Venezuelans who will be affected by today’s decision were initially offered temporary legal protections by President Trump, who extended Deferred Enforced Departure — a protection similar to TPS — to Venezuelans present in the United States on January 19, 2021. 

Following the recommendation of then-Senator, now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio, President Trump determined those protections were warranted because Venezuela’s “autocratic government… consistently violated the sovereign freedoms possessed by the Venezuelan people” and had created “the worst humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere in recent memory.” 

“I praised the Trump administration for making this compassionate determination in 2021,” said Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief. “But the autocratic regime of Nicolas Maduro is still just as oppressive as they were four-and-a-half years ago, so it makes no sense to send hundreds of thousands of people back to what is still a raging humanitarian crisis. Sadly, if the administration will seek to deport even those whom President Trump once sought to protect, I fear no one with temporary legal protections is safe — unless the courts intervene or Congress steps in to provide them with access to permanent legal status, which we urge them to do.”
World Relief encourages Venezuelans and others who currently have TPS to consult with an authorized legal service provider, including many offices of World Relief, to determine how this decision may affect them and if they may have other options to remain lawfully under U.S. law. World Relief also has created tools to assist people in advocating for bipartisan legislation solutions that would resolve the plight of the Venezuelans whose TPS will soon be revoked, such as the recently reintroduced, bipartisan Dignity Act.