By Louise Radnofsky
WASHINGTON—President Trump is reversing course on the fate of thousands of Liberians in the U.S., days before a program shielding them from deportation was set to expire, setting up a fresh fight over the administration’s immigration policy.
The Trump administration had moved to cancel on March 31 the Deferred Enforced Departure program, which had given a legal status to around 4,000 Liberians in the U.S. since 1991. The program was created in a 2007 executive action by President George W. Bush.
Immigration hard-liners in the administration have pushed to terminate several programs that created temporary protections years ago for illegal immigrants from countries facing war or natural disasters, arguing that the programs hadn’t been intended to remain in place for decades. Several of those terminations are subject to litigation.
The Trump administration is also wrangling over whether to expand the broader Temporary Protected Status program to include unauthorized Venezuelans in the U.S., following Washington’s opposition to President Nicolas Maduro. Also undetermined: the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which shielded hundreds of thousands of young immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children.
Advocates for immigrants in the U.S. without legal status had mounted a public campaign on the Liberians’ behalf. They sought Thursday to tie the administration’s move to a larger push for a permanent legal status for immigrants with TPS and DACA.
Freshman Rep. Dean Phillips (D., Minn), whose district is home to about 1,000 Liberians with DED legal protection, said hearing the news was “the most joyful moment I’ve had” in Congress so far. Mr. Phillips and Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick on Wednesday introduced legislation to move Liberian DED holders to Temporary Protected Status, which would provide them legal status for three years.
“If we can convert that to TPS, we can work on DACA and TPS, and hopefully, find a solution for the millions of people who are in limbo,” Mr. Phillips said.
The shift on the Liberians comes in contrast to the administration’s stance on illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, where Mr. Trump has declared a national emergency in a bid to secure funding for more extensive physical barriers.
Mr. Trump also canceled the Obama-era DACA program, citing concerns over executive overreach.
The Trump administration’s decision on the Liberians is in line with past moves to pull back on hard-line immigration proposals in the face of public pressure or implementation challenges, and quickly drew angry reactions from some supporters of restrictions on immigration.
“If DACA is illegal, why isn’t this illegal? We need to look at the legitimacy of this kind of action, regardless of how many or how few people are affected,” said Mark Krikorian, head of the Center for Immigration Studies. “Perhaps the more immediate point is that Trump said he was going to end this. We have one more example of a line in the sand which means nothing.”
Last summer, the president revoked an administration policy of prosecuting parents traveling with their children for illegal entry at the southern border that resulted in the separation of thousands of Central American asylum-seeking families, citing his discomfort with what he was seeing.
Mr. Trump has also spoken approvingly of the immigrants in the DACA program and said he wanted to see a legislative resolution to allow them to remain in the U.S.
In an example of implementation challenges, the Trump administration has curtailed a key component of its “zero tolerance” immigration policy, no longer charging first-time illegal border crossers with a crime in a busy stretch of West Texas amid lack of jail space.
Mr. Trump said in a memorandum issued Thursday to the secretary of state and secretary of homeland security that he planned to offer a one-year extension on the lifespan of the program, offering a reprieve through the end of March 2020.
The memorandum said the change of plan was in “the foreign policy interest of the United States,” because “the overall situation in West Africa remains concerning.”
“The reintegration of DED beneficiaries into Liberian civil and political life will be a complex task, and an unsuccessful transition could strain United States-Liberian relations and undermine Liberia’s post-civil war strides toward democracy and political stability,” the memo said.
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