FORT WORTH, Texas – The toughest part of Anna Maria’s future work is seeing Tamayo’s work etched into the faces of the refugees she helps. The trauma was evident last year when she and her husband traveled to Aurora, Colorado, to meet Venezuelans living in the United States.
“Everyone is afraid,” said Tamayo, 69, who leads the refugee support network. Among other services, her organization helps people fleeing their country apply for temporary protection status (TPS) in the United States.
“It was so bad that they were leaving,” she said of the people she met in Colorado. “Most of them didn’t talk much about it except that this was their chance to live here legally.”
The TPS was a designation created by the US government in 1990 and already protects foreigners within the country that designated to return from deportation.
President Donald Trump announced in February that nearly 300,000 Venezuelans will be stripped of their TP on Thursday. However, a federal judge in the United States blocked the move the following month, saying it was a characterisation of immigrants as a “racist bang” of immigrants as criminals.
Tamayo’s husband Andres Pacheco, 64, told Al Jazeera that TPS was a “relatively simple process” compared to asylum claims, but he is worried that status will soon not become an option for some.
“The only problem with TPS is that it only takes 18 months,” said Pacheco, who runs a nonprofit for immigration legal aid for Texas. “So these are people who live in a state of uncertainty.”
“Warzone” in Colorado
In March, the Trump administration announced that it would revoke temporary legal status of 530,000 people, including Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, according to the federal register.
Despite consistently showing that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than US citizens, Trump threw immigration crimes as a central point in his presidential election.
Trump also reflected unproven claims about the Tren de Aragua gang in Venezuela during the campaign rally. He called the city “Warzone” and used the issue to attack Democrats, blew away the fears of voters, warning that “immigrant criminals” would “rape, loot, burglar, burglar, plunder and kill the people of the United States.”
“You know what they’re doing in Colorado? They’re taking over,” Trump said at a rally in Pennsylvania. Without providing evidence, he added, “They are taking over the property. They will become real estate developers in Venezuela. They have equipment that our military doesn’t have.”
Over the next few months, Tamayo and Pacheco saw Trump repeatedly talk to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and at the same time described Venezuelan immigrants as criminals. The portrait did not match what Tamayo saw from dozens of people she met in the Aurora.
“Their country completely collapsed, so they had no medicine, no food, and they just had to leave.”
Despite Trump’s criticism, many Venezuelans living in the United States voted for president.
And this did not alleviate their fears as many are tackling the growing uncertainty of their future, despite federal judges blocking the Trump administration from temporarily ending it for the Venezuelans.
The president’s actions, as the US filmed on more than 200 immigrants (who claimed to be members of Tren de Lagua), have only exacerbated those horrors, after Trump expelled controversial wartime legislation.
Lewis, a Venezuelan-American Trump voter who lives in Dallas, told Al Jazeera that he “never thought” to target a relief program that would keep more than half a million Venezuelans, including some of his loved ones. He asked to use only his name, fearing retaliation against his family.
“(Trump) admits that Venezuela is unsafe and he understands that he doesn’t want criminals,” the 34-year-old said. “But why does he want to remove honest and hardworking people? What does he want to send us back?”
Second attempt
This is not the first time Trump has tried to end the program.
During his first term, the president tried to strip the TP from El Salvador, Haiti, and other countries he called the infamous “S *** Hole Countries.”
Advocacy groups blocked him in lawsuits, and then Marco Rubio, a US Senator and now Secretary of State Trump, conspired with the Venezuelan TPS Act and personally lobbyed for Venezuelans in a letter to then-President of National Principal Rex Tillerson.
However, this year, Rubio took a new stand on the issue.
“Designating Venezuela under the TPS will not defend America’s interests or defend America and American citizens first,” he writes.
Few other Republicans spoke to the Venezuelans.
US representative Maria Salazar, from Miami, Florida, has called on Trump not to “punish” immigrants by revoking humanitarian parole, a path to legal status organized by the Biden administration. Over 70% of Salazar’s members are Hispanic, with almost a quarter of them not US citizens.
“They came here and fled the failed Communist countries that believed in Biden’s sky promises,” writes Salazar.
Recently, Salazar celebrated a court that has even blocked Trump’s piloting, saying he “lead the fight” to protect the TPS. In fact, the fight is led by groups like the National TPS Alliance, who filed lawsuits that led to courts blocking Trump’s moves.
“Blessings for my life”
Jose Palma of the National TPS Alliance Coordinator said he is counselling hundreds of TPS recipients.
“We have stories of people from Honduras and El Salvador, and we have been in the United States for the past 25 years,” he said. “They risk losing their immigrant status and being deported despite their establishment in the US.”
Palma is a beneficiary of TPS and is particularly concerned about parents who have started families in the US, making their children a US citizen.
If they were eventually deported, he said, “Their children would either need to stay in the United States without their parents, or they would be forced to go to another country.”
Liz, now in her 50s from El Salvador, arrived in the United States in 2001 after a devastating earthquake.
Liz, who gave her only her name in fear of retaliation, says she reapplied about 12 times for TPS, and calls the program that allowed her to build a life with her family in a place where she considers her home “a blessing for my life.”
Some fees have increased and some documents have become more complicated, but the process is reliable. You will receive your status as long as it is in the required format and the country is listed.
“TPS is at least one part of many people that are needed to exercise their rights,” Liz said.
“There have been a lot of good things that have been created for the American public, even temporary,” Liz said of TPS. “We have TPS holders, who are faith leaders. We have TPS holders, who are business owners who provide employment to American citizens.”
Carmen, a 27-year-old Venezuelan of Fort Worth, Texas, reflected Liz’s comments and called it a “golden blessing” that helped him “start a life I didn’t know I had.”
“It’s time for you to leave.”
Cindy Mata, a 30-year-old community organizer in Fort Worth, also counsels TPS or humanitarian parole immigrants and recipients.
She said that since early this year, many people have received emails from the Department of Homeland Security, which departed under temporary status, saying, “It’s time for you to leave the United States.”
Part of the administration’s strategy is to encourage immigrants to begin “self-promotion.”
However, Mata said that the Department of Homeland Security emails are not always having the intended effect.
“I know when I receive the email, their first thought is, ‘Who else got this? Who else in the community needs advice, or need some help.’ ”
That’s when she worked to connect organizations and people like Parma with legal agents who were determined to keep TPS alive.
“It’s a reminder,” she said.