Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada has called on the Department of Homeland Security inspector general to open an investigation into the Trump administration’s inhumane termination of Temporary Protected Status, citing “allegations of improper political interference” that has left hundreds of thousands of immigrants across the U.S., including over 4,000 people in her state, in limbo.
While previous administrations from both parties have renewed TPS—which has been extended to immigrants who can’t return to their home countries due to such factors as natural disaster, for example—the Trump administration, on the watch of noted white supremacist Stephen Miller, made it a priority for attack, ending protections for families even though conditions in their home countries had not improved, and many have called the U.S. their home for years.
Court action has forced the administration to continue protections through early 2021, as litigation continues to play out, but Rosen told the inspector general in her letter and in person that “the ramifications for the Nevada families I represent and families across the country continue. This past August, the Head of Mission at the Consulate General of El Salvador in Las Vegas reported that the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) could not verify the documentation of legal residents with TPS status attempting to renew their driver’s licenses.”
“Such problems could have been avoided had political actors not interfered in the Department’s TPS-related decision-making,” she continued. “The driver’s license crisis is a direct result of the uncertainty surrounding TPS caused by the Department’s politically motivated policy decisions.” In fact, government documents obtained by Senate Democrats last year showed that Trump officials, including Miller, ignored the advice of experienced State Department career officials who had cautioned against ending TPS.
Nearly 300,000 U.S. citizen children live in households with a TPS recipient, meaning that a permanent end to these protections stands to spark yet another family separation crisis. In a recent editorial, the Las Vegas Sun commended Rosen’s call for an investigation, saying that TPS families are “our co-workers, our neighbors, our fellow congregants at our houses of worship, our fellow school parents, and so on. In Las Vegas and other communities with sizable groups of TPS recipients, they’re also a strong part of our economy.”
TPS families in fact are deserving of permanent protections, which the House passed earlier this year, along with protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients and Deferred Enforced Departure holders. Rosen and her colleagues in the Senate could be debating this legislation right now, but it’s being blocked by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, along with many other pieces of progressive legislation passed by the House. These families need security, but in the meantime, they need TPS and DACA and DED.
“It is imperative that the Office of the Inspector General investigate the role that political considerations and interagency pressures play in agency decisions that affect some of the most vulnerable people in the U.S. and our national security,” Rosen concludes. “More than 4,000 individuals with TPS status live in Nevada, raising families, working legally, paying taxes, and contributing to our communities. These families have built their lives in Nevada and the United States, some for more than two decades.”