By Hank Russell
Governor Kathy Hochul recently sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin, calling on him to “reverse course” on terminating Temporary Protected Status for immigrants living in the country. She said that eliminating such protections is “reckless” and “inhumane.”
As previously reported in Long Island Life & Politics, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes ruled against then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who sought to deport the immigrants once their TPS expired. Reyes — who was appointed to the bench by then-President Joe Biden — said Noem failed to consult with the appropriate agencies before making the decision to send them back to their home country. The decision affected between 300,000 and 350,000 Haitian immigrants.
However, on June 25, the Supreme Court ruled in Mullin v. Doe that President Donald Trump can revoke TPS on any and all immigrant groups. DHS General Counsel James Percival took to social media to celebrate the decision.
“The point of TPS is to delay a return home because TEMPORARY conditions do not allow it,” Percival wrote. “In other words, everyone agrees you are going home, it’s a question of when. Some time ago, the Left and their proxies on the judiciary figured out they could slowly and quietly turn TPS into an amnesty program. Fundamentally, the Left is outraged because the gig is up.”
U.S. District Court Judge Anna Burroughs — who was appointed by then-President Barack Obama — initially ruled in favor of a group of Somali immigrants and allowed the protections to stay in place, but, on August 14, Burroughs reversed her decision and lifted the stay, according to Fox News.
According to the Pew Research Center, the revocation of TPS has affected 1 million of the 1.3 million immigrants in the program. The immigrants most impacted by the court’s decision come from Haiti, Venezuela and Honduras.
TPS was granted to immigrants, allowing them to stay in the U.S. to escape political turmoil or natural disasters. The Trump administration argued that they should be sent back to their home countries because those threats no longer exist.
In her letter to Mullin, Hochul wrote, “The callousness of abruptly ending TPS for legally-present individuals including the recent termination for Haitians and the forthcoming termination for Salvadorians will force New York State and local governments to sever the employment of hundreds of essential employees as soon as next week, putting their livelihoods – and potentially their safety – at risk.”
She went on to write that this will impact not only “government workers,” but “ private sector industries across our state … with a particularly heavy impact on the healthcare industry, putting our seniors and other vulnerable New Yorkers at risk.”
“By knowingly and cruelly forcing thousands of families to leave our country and return to their home countries, regardless of any ongoing or worsening humanitarian crises, the White House is committing a reckless and inhumane act. But it is not too late to reverse course,” Hochul added.
Daniel S. Drucker of Drucker Law Firm, with offices in Long Island and Queens, offered a solution. “I think a good idea for a country like El Salvador, which is relatively stable, would be to provide a path to permanent residency for those who have worked and paid taxes for many years,” he said. “Haiti is still lawless and unsafe so TPS should never have been rescinded.”
LILP reached out to DHS. “The assertion that the only way we can support the health care industry is by allowing unvetted illegal aliens to remain in the country is grossly false and lazy,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
Although the agency said it “is conducting law enforcement activities across the country to keep Americans safe, it said it “does not discuss ongoing or future operations.”
“Temporary Protected Status is exactly that — temporary. For too long, TPS has been allowed to function as a de facto amnesty program despite Congress never intending it to be permanent,” the spokesperson said. “What we would say now is it’s closing time which means you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. The good news is it’s not too late to get a $2,600 check and a free flight home.”