The Dallas Morning News
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The Supreme Court’s decision to authorize the Trump administration to shut down a relief program protecting the residency of some 350,000 Venezuelans is the end result of a bad series of events that can only get worse for the people whose lives are affected.

Temporary Protected Status is an immigration tool that should only be used in exceptional circumstances, but prior administrations have too often used this relief as a de facto pathway for legal residence. The Biden administration wrongly relied on TPS for blue cities that had decided to treat federal immigration law as if it didn’t apply to them. When Venezuelan migrants showed up in droves and needed shelter in these cities, President Joe Biden used TPS as a relief valve.

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But just as the past administration was wrong to use a temporary tool to accommodate hundreds of thousands of people streaming into the country, the Trump administration is failing in the way it wants to solve the problem Biden created.

Trump should allow the program to expire next year as originally intended. At that time, some migrants may be subject to deportation, others may have asylum cases or other options. That is a fair deal. What is unfair is pulling the rug out from under people.

Under Biden, Venezuelans were able to apply for TPS in 2021 and 2023. The Supreme Court decision affects the latter group, but roughly half a million Venezuelans live in the U.S. under this designation.

Suddenly canceling TPS for Venezuelans, many of them North Texas residents, upends lives. These are people who were legally allowed to work and live in the U.S., enroll their children in schools, sign leases, buy property and otherwise begin building lives. While many may have pending asylum cases, their work permits could become invalid, and huge numbers will be subject to deportation. Extending TPS into late 2026, as intended, would give them the time they expected when they entered the program.

Enacted in 1990, TPS is a specific designation for migrants arriving from countries undergoing natural disasters, armed conflict, or extraordinary temporary conditions. It is this third condition that Biden used as justification for applying TPS to Venezuelans.

Today, migrants from 17 nations benefit from TPS, with Venezuelans making up the largest number. The program was never intended to enroll people from countries like Venezuela, where dictatorship has gripped the nation since the reign of Hugo Chavez and triggered a diaspora of over 7 million people.

No one doubts the suffering of the Venezuelan people. It is a human tragedy that all free nations must stand together to oppose. Regime change is the hope for a better future for this nation, but that doesn’t appear to be on the horizon.

There is a lesson here. Misapplying this nation’s immigration laws in the name of political expediency is not a solution. It can, and has, exacerbated the complexity of an already complex problem.

Our nation has laws, and those laws must be respected. But our nation also has humanity, and the Trump administration should honor, for a few more months, the temporary protection Biden extended.

— The Dallas Morning News