Biden administration expands Temporary Protected Status for nearly half a million Venezuelans

Almost half a million Venezuelans will now be eligible for protection from deportation and will be able to get work authorizations, after the Biden administration expanded Temporary Protected Status for Venezuela, amid calls from public officials, activists, and service providers in South Florida and across the U.S. asking the federal government to amplify the benefits.

The Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday night that it would redesignate and extend TPS — a longstanding program that allows people already in the U.S. from countries in turmoil to temporarily live and work here — for the South American country, where more than 7 million people have fled because of ongoing social, political, and economic crises.

There are already more than 242,000 recipients under Venezuela’s Temporary Protected Status, according to DHS. The agency estimates that another 472,000 additional people will now benefit from the huge expansion, which comes as more Venezuelans have arrived in the United States in the past three years. It also kept the benefits for current recipients for another year and a half.

To qualify for the protections, new recipients must have arrived prior to July 31, 2023, and have been continuously in the U.S.. The previous designation date for TPS was March 9, 2021. That means that eligible Venezuelans who have arrived after that, but before the new date, are now eligible.

“Temporary Protected Status provides individuals already present in the United States with protection from removal when the conditions in their home country prevent their safe return,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, “That is the situation that Venezuelans who arrived on or before July 31 find themselves in.”

The Impact on South Florida

Miami-Dade County, which has the largest population of Venezuelan immigrants nationwide, has been a key destination for many recently arrived migrants from the South American country. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that nearly 133,000 lived there in 2022. In all, Florida is home to nearly half of all the Venezuelans in the United States.

John de la Vega, a Caracas-born, Miami-based immigration attorney with several Venezuelan clients, called the TPS expansion a “very positive” development.

“This is going to help thousands of Venezuelans immersed in court proceedings, facing deportation proceedings, appealing asylum or facing final deportation,” he said. “They will be protected.”

About 30,000 people in South Florida will benefit from the TPS expansion, according to Adelys Ferro, executive director of the Venezuelan-American Caucus, a national advocacy group headquartered in the state.

“Temporary Protected Status had never been granted to any group in these numbers,” Ferro said. “It’s a historic day.”

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava — who along with South Florida immigration rights activists has called for a TPS expansion for Venezuela and other countries through letters, press conferences and conversations with DHS — also welcomed Wednesday’s announcement.

She described South Florida as a long-time “beacon of hope for hundreds of thousands of families who escape tyranny, oppression, warfare, and human rights violations.

“Many Miami-Dade County residents – including Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Haitians – have received TPS and as a result, have made invaluable contributions to both our community and economy,” the mayor said in a statement. “I commend the Biden administration for taking these necessary steps which will allow hundreds of thousands of families – who arrived fleeing dictatorship and seeking freedom and opportunity – to build new lives and contribute to our community.”

As Florida faces employee shortages amid a low unemployment rate, local officials and advocates say the new TPS designation for Venezuela could help alleviate labor scarcity in an economy where jobs are plenty and workers few.

No U.S. state has nearly as many TPS recipients as Florida, which was home to 197,485 recipients as of March 2023, according to a Congressional Research Service report from July. Texas, the state with second-largest number of TPS recipients, had 69,840 beneficiaries.

The explosive growth has taken place within one year: Florida had 65,100 beneficiaries in February of last year. Venezuelans fueled two-thirds of that increase, the report said.

Work permits, expansion of civil detention

Homeland Security also made several announcements about new policies and operational changes within its agencies, which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The department announced it will deploy more staff to handle the work permit applications for immigrants paroled into the U.S. It will also continue sending texts and emails to people who are eligible and have not yet applied to encourage them to do so. The agency said that Citizenship and Immigration Services had already sent more than 1.4 million messages in several languages, including Creole, Spanish and Ukrainian.

Work permits for “certain non-citizens,” such as refugees, asylum seekers, and people adjusting their status, will now be valid for five years.

“This is anticipated to also reduce the associated workload and processing times, which will allow [immigration authorities] to concentrate efforts on initial work authorization caseload,” said Homeland Security, whose aim is to reduce the median processing time from three months to one.

Lawyers in South Florida have told the Herald that work approvals have been slow to come under Biden, forcing recent arrivals to work illegally or not at all while they await for the employment authorizations.

The mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, as well as state officials and U.S. Congress members from the Empire State, have publicly asked Biden and DHS to speed up work permit processing and redesignate TPS for Venezuela. Adams has estimated that the city has seen the arrival of more than 116,000 asylum seekers since last spring, describing the situation as a “humanitarian crisis.”

Homeland Security also said Wednesday it has increased the federal government’s capacity for civil immigration detention, worked with the Defense Department to direct more military personnel to the border, sped up deportations of families ineligible to stay, and made agreements with other countries to “streamline” deportations, including collaborating with Mexico so the federal government can deport non-Mexicans to the neighboring country.

“President Biden has called on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform since his first day in office. As a result of Congress’ failure to enact the reform, the Administration has been using the limited tools it has available to secure the border and build a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system while leading the largest expansion of lawful pathways for immigration in decades,” Homeland Security said.

“Eternally grateful”

President Biden first designated Venezuela for Temporary Protected Status in March 2021. Venezuela was also the first country for which his administration created a new parole process so nationals outside the U.S. could come live and work here for two years if they met certain requirements, including having a financial sponsor in the U.S., passing medical and background checks, and buying their own plane ticket.

The program was announced in October 2022. DHS later expanded the Biden parole programs to include Nicaragua, Haiti, and Cuba in January of this year. The administration has said that the parole processes are meant to curb irregular migration.

The number of Venezuelans coming to the United States has been rising since 2021. Federal data shows that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection registered over 48,000 encounters with Venezuelan nationals in the U.S.-Mexico during that fiscal year.

By fiscal year 2022, that number had gone up to over 187,000 encounters. This fiscal year, which began last Oct. 1, border authorities recorded 168,047 encounters with Venezuelan nationals through July 31 of this year.

José Hernández, former representative of the Venezuelan opposition at the Organization of American States, said he was “very grateful to the United States and the Biden administration for the welcome given to Venezuelans.” But he said he regretted the behaviors of some recently arrived Venezuelans in cities like New York, alluding to reports of violent encounters with police, aggressive behavior towards random pedestrians, and littering.

“That hurts all of us instead of helping us to obtain the help and benefits that we need. We are a hard-working community, a community that creates,” he said. “A community that has come here seeking a new horizon, not people seeking to replicate here the lawlessness prevalent in Venezuela.”

Ferro, the executive director from the Venezuelan American Caucus, said that the Venezuelan community in the United States was “eternally grateful” for the administration’s decision.

“This TPS is not only a humanitarian solution and an economic solution for the United States,” she said. “It is also one a recognition of a crisis that will not get better in Venezuela as long as the dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro continues.”