Washington: Donald Trump's administration has said it will end Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from Somalia, the latest move in the president's mass deportation agenda, the Associated Press reported.
The move on Tuesday affects hundreds of people who are a small subset of immigrants living in the United States with TPS protections.
It comes during Trump's immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, where many native Somalis live and where street protests have intensified since a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent killed a US citizen who was demonstrating against federal presence in the city.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that affected Somalis must leave the US by March 17, when existing protections, last extended by then-President Joe Biden, will expire.
“Temporary means temporary,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, adding that the decision puts “Americans first.”
The Congressional Research Service last spring said the Somali TPS population was 705 out of nearly 1.3 million TPS immigrants. Trump has ended protections across multiple countries in his second presidency.
Noem insisted circumstances in Somalia “have improved to the point that it no longer meets the law's requirement for Temporary Protected Status.” But the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which advocates for fair treatment of Muslims in the US, criticised the latest rollback as a “bigoted attack” that will send some Somalis back to a war-torn, unstable nation.
“This decision does not reflect changed conditions in Somalia,” CAIR said in a statement released jointly with its Minnesota chapter. “By dismantling protections for one of the most vulnerable Black and Muslim communities, this decision exposes an agenda rooted in exclusion, not public safety.”
Located in the horn of Africa, Somalia is one of the world's poorest nations and has for decades been beset by chronic strife exacerbated by multiple natural disasters, including severe droughts.