Trump is continuing his assault on Immigration as his administration will end temporary protected status (TPS) for immigrants from Somalia, the latest move in the president’s mass deportation agenda.
The move affects hundreds of people of a small subset of immigrants with TPS protections in the United States. It comes during Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, where many native Somalis live and where street protests have intensified since a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent killed Renee Good, a U.S citizen who was a legal observer of federal presence in the city.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that affected Somalis must leave the U.S. by March 17, when existing protections, last extended by former President Biden, will expire.
“Temporary means temporary,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, adding that the decision puts “Americans first.”
In December, Trump said he did not want Somalis in the U.S., saying they “come from hell” and “contribute nothing.” He made no distinction between citizens and non-citizens or offered any opinion on immigration status. He has had especially harsh words for Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat who emigrated from Somalia as a child. Trump has repeatedly suggested she should be deported, despite her being a U.S. citizen, and in his rant last fall, he called her “garbage.”
Trump then followed that up by announcing that starting Feb. 1, he will deny federal funding to any states that are home to local governments resisting his administration’s immigration policies, expanding on previous threats to cut off resources to the so-called sanctuary cities themselves. Trump unveiled the concept this time late in a speech Tuesday at the Detroit Economic Club, without offering specifics.
“Starting Feb. 1, we’re not making any payments to sanctuary cities or states having sanctuary cities, because they do everything possible to protect criminals at the expense of American citizens, and it breeds fraud and crime and all of the other problems that come,” he said. “So we’re not making any payment to anybody that supports sanctuary cities.”
Last year, a California judge struck down the idea despite government lawyers saying it was too early to stop the plan when no action had been taken, and no specific conditions had been laid out.
There is no strict definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities, but the terms generally describe limited cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The list is overwhelmingly made up of places where local and state governments are controlled by Democrats, including the states of California, Connecticut, and New York, cities such as Boston and New York, and counties including Baltimore County, Maryland, and Cook County, Illinois.
