Biden Thwarts Trump’s Deportation Plans with Migrant Protections

What’s happening: President Joe Biden’s outgoing border chief, Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS) Alejandro Mayorkas, has extended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for around 900,000 migrants, including 234,000 from El Salvador and 600,000 from Venezuela, until 2026. Migrants from El Salvador, Sudan, and Ukraine were also included.

• The reasoning: DHS pointed to environmental disasters in El Salvador, political and economic crises in Venezuela, violence and political instability in Sudan, and the ongoing war in Ukraine as reasons to extend their protections.

Complicating Trump’s plans: President-elect Donald Trump has made mass deportations a central part of his agenda, having honed in specifically on Venezuelans involved in the Tren de Aragua gang that has wreaked havoc across America.

• Delays: This order from the Biden administration will make it nearly impossible for Trump to deport these illegal or quasi-legal migrants for the first year and a half of his presidency.

A blessing in disguise? The director of the right-leaning Center for Immigration Studies, Mark Krikorian, noted that this extension effectively gives Trump officials a "gift" by pushing the decision to a more manageable time frame.

• More: Trump’s immigration deputies will be swamped with the “shock and awe” Trump has promised on Day One of his presidency. The 18-month extension may allow Trump’s team time to put together a comprehensive plan for how to roll out mass deportations for tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants.

Why it matters: The Biden administration gave dubious reasons for extending TPS for nearly one million migrants, like excessive rainfall, when the intention of granting extended protections was to protect them from the imminent danger of returning home. Biden has now blocked a key Trump agenda item, hindering his predecessor’s — and successor’s — efforts to address Biden's failures on mass illegal migration.

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From the left: NPR reported on El Salvadoran migrants and how many of them were granted amnesty in the 1990s because they were escaping a brutal civil war. Many of them now have children here, complicating deportations.

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