Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and 17 other GOP attorneys general are challenging Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from 17 vulnerable countries. They are asking officials at President Donald Trump’s office clearly anti-immigrant administration to check whether safeguards are necessary.
In statement On Tuesday, Yost said some were allowed to remain in the United States even when it was “safe” to return home. However, he did not name a single such country – and publicly available reports make it hard to guess which places he may have in mind.
His office was asked if he could identify someone with ephemeral protected status who could safely return to his or her home country. A spokeswoman responded that it was not the attorney general’s job to make such determinations.
An immigrant advocate said the letter was another way to keep vulnerable immigrants out of the picture. This echoes the false claims made last summer by current President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and others that Haitians placed under Temporary Protected Status in Springfield were stealing and eating neighbors’ animalsshe said. This led to dozens of bomb threats AND reports of violence against immigrants.
“It’s about intimidation,” said Lynn Tramonte, founder of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. “It’s about destabilization. These are authoritarian tactics in which people become unsafe in their homes and communities. It’s really sad. J.D. Vance himself brought violence to Springfield.”
Long-term problems
Yost and the other attorneys general sent a letter to Kristi Noem, head of Trump’s Department of Homeland Security. It has now been confirmed that Noem has the power to grant or revoke Temporary Protected Status, or TPS. Last week, her farewell address as governor of North Dakota was packed with speeches definitely anti-immigrant rhetoric.
The Trump administration is giving immigration officers expanded powers to quickly deport immigrants, including people the Biden administration has temporarily allowed into the country on parole, according to an internal memo, as reported by States Newsroom this weekend.
“TPS beneficiaries represent more than one million immigrants in the United States who otherwise lack legal status,” reads the attorney general’s letter to Noem. “Turning TPS into a long-term resident license defeats the purposes of Congress and only increases the financial and governmental burden on states.”
In addition to Yost, the letter to Noem was signed by attorneys general from Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming.
The letter largely highlights the fact that the designation has the word “temporary” in its name and that people from some countries have enjoyed ephemeral protection for decades.
“For example, Honduras first received TPS after the 1998 hurricane, and DHS bases its current TPS designation on “sustainability.”[ing]conditions related to the same event,” the letter said. “TPS extensions have become routine over the decades.”
According to statutory language provided by Yost’s office, the Secretary of Homeland Security may grant TPS as he deems it appropriate “that extraordinary and temporary conditions exist in a foreign country which make it impossible for aliens who are nationals of that country to return safely to the country.”
Tramonte said state attorneys general are misinterpreting the law.
“It’s called ‘temporary protected status,'” she said. “It’s not called ‘short-term protected status.’ When a crisis happens, whether it’s a natural disaster or a political crisis, it takes years to recover. They focus on the word “temporary” as if it meant short-lived. But all it means is that Congress said we’ll leave you alone and we won’t deport you because it’s unsafe to send you back.”
Appalling conditions
In his 2023 report on human rights practicesThe U.S. Department of State said this about Honduras, a country that GOP AGs have considered a TPS country for almost 27 years:
“Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: arbitrary or unlawful killings; torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment by government agents; difficult and life-threatening conditions in prisons; arbitrary arrest or detention; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom, including threats against media representatives by criminal elements; serious government corruption; widespread gender-based violence, including domestic violence, sexual violence and femicide; and crimes involving violence or threats of violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or intersex people.”
In fact, of the 17 countries covered by TPS, 11 have the Department of State’s strictest travel warning – don’t travel. Three of them have the next highest score, reconsider your trip. And three have the second lowest, increased caution should be exercised.
Reports for the latter countries – Cameroon, Nepal and El Salvador – show how risky returning there can be, especially if you are not a tourist from a developed country.
Human Rights Guard World Report 2024 says El Salvador has been hit by gang violence and then “a the state of emergency (which was) adopted in March 2022, under which suspended fundamental rights continue to apply. The authorities have committed widespread human rights violations, including mass arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, ill-treatment in detention centers and due process violations.”
Human Rights Watch report on Cameroon “detailed”“continuous clashes between armed groups and government forces in Cameroon’s Anglophone and Far North regions have severely affected civilians, with the number of unlawful killings, abductions and raids on villages increasing in the second half of the year.”
And the Department of State’s 2023 report Nepal described ‘ssignificant human rights issues (including) credible reports of: arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment by a government; arbitrary detention; solemn restrictions on freedom of expression and media, including violence or threats of violence against journalists and unjustified arrests of journalists.”
These are the TPS countries that the Department of State considers to be the safest of 17 that are worth going to. The letter the attorney general wrote to Noem criticized former President Joe Biden for extending Temporary Protected Status to Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela, as well as El Salvador.
Ukraine was devastated by war since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion in 2022. Sudan has been torn apart by civil war since 2023, which has resulted in military enlistment child soldiers, sexual violence and other atrocities. And in Venezuela, the socialist government is why the economy is so dysfunctional 90% live in povertyand has highest crime rate in the world.
Safe?
In a statement announcing that he and other Republican attorneys general had called for a review of TPS nominations, Yost said some were unthreatening to return to their home countries.
“This program has been applied too loosely, allowing foreigners to live here indefinitely even after they can safely return home,” he added. statement quoted Yost, who last week announced a 2026 run for governor.
Asked if the Ohio AG could name one, his spokeswoman said it wasn’t his job.
“Regardless, the Ohio Attorney General does not have the authority to make judgments regarding TPS,” spokeswoman Bethany McCorkle said in an email. “Therefore, the letter does not call for the immediate abolition of any nation’s designation.
“The letter requests that the Secretary review country conditions and issue his assessment of the countries’ status which have been described as “temporary”.[ily]”protected for years, sometimes decades, based on the same island events,” she added. “If conditions in a given country are currently unsafe based on new/current factors that would meet the high bar established by Congress for TPS, the Secretary would have the discretion to grant TPS on that basis.”
Call for an administration led by A a strongly anti-immigration president review and possible denial of protected status to immigrants could not agree with public opinion. A December poll sponsored by the National Immigration Forum and the Bulfinch group found that 73% of Americans agreed that immigration policy should protect the persecuted and keep families intact.
Tramonte of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, stated that the real purpose of the letter was to divert public attention from the real cause of suffering for many Americans.
“It’s making headlines, it’s getting recognition from the people they’re trying to rile up,” she said. “They are trying to distract from their larger agenda, which is to give corporations more tax breaks and help the rich while average people have to work multiple jobs to pay their rent.”
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