For Immediate Release
September 23, 2022
Media Contact
Erik Villalobos, evillalobos@ndlon.org
Migrant Families and Community Leaders Risk Arrest to Demand that Biden Administration Protect Families Left Vulnerable by Trump TPS Terminations
Washington DC—Today, TPS holders and community and religious leaders from across the country join at the White House to demand that President Biden protect hundreds of thousands of TPS holders and their families left in limbo by Trump’s TPS terminations, and ensure humanitarian protections for those who need them.
In the first two years of the Trump presidency, Trump terminated TPS for six countries, threatening the legal status of over 400,000 people. The overwhelming majority of these TPS holders have lived in the United States legally for more than twenty years and have U.S. citizen children who risk family separation if TPS is terminated.
TPS holders brought a legal case and won relief from the courts, but that relief is set to expire soon if the Biden administration does not act.
TPS holders and their allies are calling on the Biden administration to enter into a just settlement to the Ramos case—which challenges the Trump terminations—and to re-designate TPS for El Salvador, Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua before their protections are set to expire at the end of the year.
“I was 14 years old when I found out that my mother was a TPS holder, and that Trump terminated her TPS status. Trump is gone, but the Trump TPS terminations hang over our heads. My mom, and so many others, may still lose everything,” said Crista Ramos, 18 years old and the lead plaintiff in the Ramos v. Mayorkas case, who risks arrest today at the White House. “Biden must settle my case and protect my mom and the hundreds of thousands of other vulnerable TPS holders who have built stable lives, families and communities in this country.”
“TPS holders have been political pawns for too long. They and their families deserve lasting protection and full equal rights,” said Chris Newman, General Counsel of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), which represents the plaintiffs in the Ramos case. “The Biden administration should enter into a just settlement to provide TPS holders and their families with stability and mitigate the great harm inflicted by the Trump administration’s racist and unconstitutional TPS terminations. Finally, President Biden must use his existing statutory authority to re-designate TPS for countries in need. He has a moral obligation and the legal authority to protect hundreds of thousands of Americans in waiting. All that is needed is political will.”
TPS holders also call on the Biden administration to designate Guatemala for TPS and create a pathway to citizenship for TPS holders who have resided in the United States for a long time.
“We call on President Biden to use the power of his pen to do what’s right, to stop deportations, and to protect our communities. Biden should re-designate TPS for El Salvador, Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua, and designate TPS for Guatemala,” said Jessika Girón, a TPS Holder from Morristown, New Jersey, and an Executive Committee member of the National TPS Alliance which organized today’s event. “The Biden administration should expand TPS to protect other migrants and refugees in need of immediate relief.”
“Protecting our communities is the bare minimum for a government that owes a historical debt to a region ravaged by U.S. intervention and to its people who persistently face mistreatment at our border with their labor having been used to sustain the US economy,” said Martha Fernandez, a TPS Holder from Palmdale, California. “Designating TPS for Guatemala and re-designating TPS for the countries terminated by Trump is the bare minimum. We need reparations and justice.”
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The National TPS Alliance is a grassroots immigrant rights organization of over 50 committees nationwide, advocating for the permanent residency of more than 400,000 beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status (TPS)
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