The US on Friday said it was terminating the legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, giving them weeks to leave the country.
US President Donald Trump has pledged to carry out the largest deportation campaign in US history and curb immigration, mainly from Latin American nations.
The order affects about 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who came to the US under a scheme launched in October 2022 by Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, and expanded in January the following year.
Photo: EPA-EFE
They would lose their legal protection 30 days after the US Department of Homeland Security’s order is published in the Federal Register, which is scheduled for Tuesday.
That means immigrants sponsored by the program “must depart the United States” by April 24 unless they have secured another immigration status allowing them to remain in the country, the order says.
Welcome.US, which supports people seeking refuge in the US, urged those affected by the move to “immediately” seek advice from an immigration lawyer.
Separately, Trump denied signing a proclamation invoking a 200-year-old law to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members who were sent to prison in El Salvador.
His downplaying of his role in the affair came just hours after a federal judge called Trump’s use of the law “incredibly troublesome.”
Last week, Trump invoked the rare wartime Alien Enemies Act to deport 238 men his administration alleged were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and send them to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.
In a statement at the time, the White House press secretary wrote that Trump “signed a Proclamation Invoking the Alien Enemies Act” and the document additionally appeared in the Federal Register with Trump’s signature on it.
However, on Friday, Trump suggested US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had more to do with the matter.
“I don’t know when it was signed, because I didn’t sign it. Other people handled it,” he said.
“Marco Rubio has done a great job and he wanted them out and we go along with that,” he added.
Earlier in the day, James Boasberg, the chief judge of the US District Court in Washington, questioned the legality of using the little-known 1798 Alien Enemies Act to summarily send the Venezuelan migrants to the prison in El Salvador.
“The policy ramifications of this are incredibly troublesome and problematic and concerning,” Boasberg said.
He said that the only previous uses of the act were “in the War of 1812, World War I and World War II, when there was no question there was a declaration of war and who the enemy was.”
Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed suit against the deportations along with other rights groups, said that even during World War II “people got hearings.”
“It was not this summary removal,” Gelernt said.
“You have to be able to contest,” he said. “Otherwise anyone could be taken off the street.”
Last week, Boasberg issued an emergency order against the deportations and said that two flights already in the air needed to turn around. The US Department of Justice said the judge’s jurisdiction no longer applied as the planes were in international airspace.
At Friday’s hearing, Boasberg said “the government’s not being terribly cooperative at this point, but I will get to the bottom of whether they violated my order.”
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that nearly the entire civil rights branch of the Department of Homeland Security was fired on Friday.
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