There's a program called Temporary Protected Status, which is where illegals from a country are given "temporary" resident status of a type, ostensibly because trying to send them back is likely to end up with them being outright killed from negligence, or because it would leave them functionally stateless.
Biden basically ordered Venezuela, El Salvador, and Haiti added to the list of qualifying nations, with no real plan to end the qualification. There are 600,000 Venezuelans here under TPS, 300,000 Haitians, and 100,000 El Salvadorans. For reference, there are only 100,000 Ukrainians. Despite it being "temporary," only something like 10% of the Venezuelans actually intended to leave (no ideas on the others, probably not even that high though), so it was obviously just a way to backdoor a million people into the country, let them get established, and then claim it was impossible to kick them out because they were already invested in our nation, like they're doing right now with Mexicans and Ecuadorans.
Trump had these statuses revoked this year. The courts are playing games with the Haitian ones (you may remember headlines about him stripping protections from Haitians early this year), but the Venezuelan and El Salvadoran ones are on their way out. In fact, the Venezuelans who were here under the first wave of allowances in 2021 officially lost their status just yesterday. The El Salvadorans and Haitians are meant to lose their status early next year, and the remaining Venezuelans from the 2023 allowances out this time next year.
That's not to say the deportations we've already done have been especially clean or efficient, and some of that has been because he's protecting people who use illegal labor, but taking a wrecking ball to this particular issue before it became a bigger one was a good move.
There's a program called Temporary Protected Status, which is where illegals from a country are given "temporary" resident status of a type, ostensibly because trying to send them back is likely to end up with them being outright killed from negligence, or because it would leave them functionally stateless.
Biden basically ordered Venezuela, El Salvador, and Haiti added to the list of qualifying nations, with no real plan to end the qualification. There are 600,000 Venezuelans here under TPS, 300,000 Haitians, and 100,000 El Salvadorans. For reference, there are only 100,000 Ukrainians. Despite it being "temporary," only something like 10% of the Venezuelans actually intended to leave (no ideas on the others, probably not even that high though), so it was obviously just a way to backdoor a million people into the country, let them get established, and then claim it was impossible to kick them out because they were already invested in our nation, like they're doing right now with Mexicans and Ecuadorans.
Trump had these statuses revoked this year. The courts are playing games with the Haitian ones (you may remember headlines about him stripping protections from Haitians early this year), but the Venezuelan and El Salvadoran ones are on their way out. In fact, the Venezuelans who were here under the first wave of allowances in 2021 officially lost their status just yesterday. The El Salvadorans and Haitians are meant to lose their status early next year, and the remaining Venezuelans from the 2023 allowances out this time next year.
That's not to say the deportations we've already done have been especially clean or efficient, and some of that has been because he's protecting people who use illegal labor, but taking a wrecking ball to this particular issue before it became a bigger one was a good move.