LOS ANGELES, CA – Maria Eugenia Torres Ramirez has lived in Los Angeles since 2021, when she came to the United States seeking asylum. She fled Venezuela after being targeted as a political activist against President Nicolas Maduro. Since arriving, she has been protected by Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which allows her to work legally and stay in the country while her asylum case is reviewed. However, if her asylum request is denied, she fears she will be at risk of deportation once TPS protections end.
Torres Ramirez, 37, never planned to stay in the U.S. illegally. When she arrived in Texas in 2021 with her two young children, she turned herself in to border agents and asked for asylum, saying she feared for her life. Before she left Venezuela, federal police fired shots outside her restaurant and threatened her employees, trying to find her.
While waiting for her asylum case, Torres Ramirez applied for TPS, which gives people from certain countries permission to live and work in the U.S. if their home country is unsafe. But now, the Trump administration has decided to end TPS for many Venezuelans, including her.
“It’s terrifying,” she said. “If they deny my asylum, I won’t have any legal protection anymore. That would make me undocumented.”
Trump’s Immigration Crackdown
President Trump has made stopping illegal immigration a big part of his re-election campaign. But his administration has also cut legal ways for immigrants to stay in the U.S., affecting hundreds of thousands of people who fled war and political violence.
Under Trump, the government shut down an app that allowed migrants to apply for legal entry at the southern border. Refugee admissions have been suspended, and special programs that let people from Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Venezuela come to the U.S. have been canceled. TPS, which currently applies to people from 17 countries, is also expected to end for many when current protections expire.
Trump had previously tried to end TPS for people from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan, Nepal, and Honduras, but those decisions were blocked in court. When President Biden took office, he expanded TPS to include Venezuelans, Ukrainians, and others. Before leaving office, Biden extended many TPS protections for 18 more months, the longest allowed by law.
However, the Trump administration has already canceled Biden’s TPS extension for 350,000 Venezuelans, including Torres Ramirez. Their protection will end on April 7, while another 250,000 Venezuelans will keep their status until September. Legal experts say Trump’s reasoning for ending Venezuelan TPS could be used to end protections for other countries as well.
Republicans, including Trump, argue that Biden’s immigration policies allowed too many people to enter the U.S. legally.
“They just made up different categories and called them legal pathways, but they’re not,” said Tom Homan, Trump’s immigration advisor, in a recent interview.
New Deportation Rules
When Biden was president, he expanded temporary protections for immigrants. His administration hoped that by offering legal pathways, fewer people would cross the border illegally. However, after record-high border crossings in 2023, Trump is now making major changes.
Trump ordered officials to stop letting migrants enter the U.S. through “parole,” a process that allows people in emergencies to enter for humanitarian reasons. This rule has been used for decades to help people fleeing war, including 30,000 Hungarians in 1956 and more than 330,000 Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians after the Vietnam War.
Trump’s first executive order after taking office was called “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.” It limits parole to only rare, case-by-case situations. His administration also shut down CBP One, a phone app that let migrants in Mexico apply for appointments with border agents. Since 2023, about one million people had used this app to enter the U.S. legally with work permits.
Now, immigration agents can revoke parole status and quickly deport people who have been in the U.S. for less than two years. A memo signed on Jan. 23 by Caleb Vitello, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), allows these “fast-track” deportations, skipping immigration court, which often has long backlogs.
Trump also canceled programs that let U.S. citizens financially support migrants from Ukraine, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Haiti. These programs allowed them to buy flights to the U.S. and work legally for two years. More than 240,000 Ukrainians and 530,000 people from the other countries had come through these programs.
Refugees and Other Immigrants Also Affected
Some immigrant rights advocates believe Trump’s policies are not just about border security but are meant to limit the number of non-white immigrants in the U.S.
“They don’t want to fix the immigration system. They just want to keep certain people out,” said Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
Trump’s policies also affect 76,000 Afghans who were evacuated after Kabul fell in 2021. Some of them have gotten asylum, but others may lose their legal status because their parole protections won’t be renewed.
“These parole programs work a lot like visas,” explained immigration attorney Kendra Blandon. “The people in these programs applied before they arrived, and they had to prove they had financial support in the U.S.”
In addition to canceling parole, Trump has also stopped the U.S. refugee admissions program, leaving thousands of approved refugees stuck in limbo. Last year, the U.S. resettled over 100,000 refugees, the highest number in 30 years. But now, agencies that help refugees settle in the U.S. have been told they can no longer use federal money to support new arrivals.
Dalya Hussein, who works with a refugee assistance group in Fresno, said they used to help newcomers by finding them housing, jobs, and school vaccinations. But since Trump paused the refugee program, that work has stopped.
“We had to cancel flights for families who were supposed to come here,” Hussein said. “The refugees who just arrived now have no support.”
The Impact of Ending Legal Protections
The number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. reached 13.7 million in 2023, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Advocates say that ending programs like TPS could actually increase that number. If people lose their legal status but don’t leave, they will join the ranks of the undocumented.
For Torres Ramirez, that fear is becoming real. Without TPS, she could lose her job and face deportation.
“I came here legally,” she said. “Now, I don’t know what will happen to me.”