Washington, DC – Below is a column by Maribel Hastings from America’s Voice en Español translated to English from Spanish. It ran in several Spanish-language media outlets earlier this week:
The fact the Trump administration is revoking programs that provide work permits and protection from deportation like TPS for Venezuelans, or humanitarian parole for nationals of Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela, in order to make them deportable, seems surprising to some sectors that supported the president and even voted for him. But what’s surprising is that they thought that it was not going to happen, or that supporting Trump would, in some way, shield them from his plan for mass deportations.
Republicans María Elvira Salazar, Mario Díaz-Balart, and Carlos Giménez, Cuban American representatives from Florida, are now asking the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to reconsider the decision to eliminate these programs. But these three supported Trump’s candidacy when he was going around saying he would lead the largest mass deportation program in the history of the United States. That was the time to confront him but, like the rest of the Republican legislators of this state and the country, the fear of reprisals from our very own “USA strongman” stopped them in their tracks.
Florida Cuban Americans, particularly in South Florida, overwhelmingly supported Trump in the 2024 elections despite him having warned that he would eliminate the parole that permitted more than 111,000 Cubans to enter the United States in an authorized way, a program that has broad support among this population group in Florida. It was ironically authorized by former Democratic president, Joe Biden, to take pressure off of the border, preventing irregular crossings.
At least Cubans still have the 1996 Cuban Adjustment Act as a possibility to adjust their immigration status in the United States.
But for some reason, like many Latinos around the country, they didn’t take notice when Trump promised mass deportations. They would be directed at “criminals,” they said, apparently without suspecting that, in Trump and his advisors’ dictionary, being an immigrant is synonymous with “criminal.”
For Trump and his team, there is no difference between Tren de Aragua gang members and refugees and people persecuted politically by the oppressive regime of the dictator Nicolás Maduro, as in the case of Venezuelans.
Trump had no problem negotiating with Maduro in order for him to receive deported Venezuelans, both with criminal records as well as those who are, to this day, legal residents through TPS or parole — programs eliminated by the president. For many of them, a return to Venezuela would post a real risk to their lives. Some 600,000 Venezuelans have TPS and another 117,000 have parole. The elimination of these programs makes them deportable.
Maduro is receiving deported Venezuelans; he freed a group of U.S. prisoners and, in return, Trump managed to extend oil licenses for the U.S. company Chevron, thus helping his campaign contributors and the fossil fuel industry.
On February 5, in a statement to the media, the newly appointed Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was a Republican senator from Florida and bitter critic of Maduro, said regarding TPS that “between now and April” DHS will be revising the program. Rather, the program expires on April 7, 2025.
But he insisted that “the priority are people who are linked to crime, people who are linked to gangs. I know first hand that President Trump understands well the situation with Venezuelans who find themselves in the United States, and the suffering taking place inside Venezuela today,” Rubio assured.
If that were the case, Trump would not have revoked TPS from Venezuelans, nor would he be focusing his detentions and deportations on people with work permits and protection from deportation, whether it be through TPS, parole, or because they are asylum applicants. His target never was only undocumented people but all immigrants, particularly those of color, coming from poor or developing countries. Cruelty and prejudice are their north star.
“Revoking TPS for Venezuelans not only de-legalizes an important number of people, but also legitimizes and benefits a regime of that like Nicolás Maduro, because it would make it seem like the situation in Venezuela is pretty good and that Maduro is the legitimate president of Venezuela, although he stole the elections,” indicated the group Venezuelan Persecuted Politicians in Exile (VEPPEX in Spanish), El Nuevo Herald reported.
“We support expelling criminals from U.S. territory, but we reject the fact that they want to turn all Venezuelan immigrants into delinquents,” they added.
That is why elections have serious consequences.
The original Spanish version is here.
