Administration Ends Temporary Protected Status for Thousands of Refugees

Refugee resettlement organizations speak out against this decision. 

Refugee resettlement organizations have come out publicly after the the Department of Homeland Security confirmed the administration will end legal protections for thousands of Afghans and Cameroonians living legally in the U.S. under temporary protected status (TPS). 

This will affect as many as 14,600 Afghans who will lose their status in May, and  7,900 Cameroonians who are set to lose it in June. 

Afghans were first made eligible for TPS in 2022 under the Biden administration in response to the country’s internal conflict under Taliban rule. Shawn VanDriver, president of #AfghanEvac, condemned the Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s claim that Afghanistan no longer meets the statutory requirements for its TPS status.  

“The conditions on the ground haven't improved—they've worsened," he said. "Afghans who were invited here, who built lives here, are now being told they don't matter. It's cruel, it's chaotic, and it undermines everything America claimed to stand for when we promised not to leave our allies behind."

Andrew Sullivan is the executive director of No One Left Behind, which supports SIV recipients. “Many of these allies completed the requisite substantial and valuable service to U.S. national security, yet are still in processing for an SIV because of documents and connections lost in the chaos of the U.S. withdrawal," Sullivan posted in a public statement. "This decision throws our allies into harmful uncertainty."

Cameroonians were granted TPS status in 2022 in the face of ongoing armed conflict between government forces and armed separatists, and a rise in attacks led by Boko Haram. 

Earlier in April, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen blocked the Trump administration from ending TPS for Venezuelans, writing that “Generalization of criminality to the Venezuelan TPS population as a whole is baseless and smacks of racism predicated on generalized false stereotypes.”