Thread: Trump officials disregarded warnings not to revoke protections for immigrants: report

Trump officials disregarded warnings not to revoke protections for immigrants: report

05/08/18 07:18 PM EDT



Top Trump administration officials ignored the advice of senior American diplomats not to end the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of Central Americans and Haitians living in the U.S.

The warnings, transmitted in a series of diplomatic cables to top State Department officials last year, conveyed that ending the immigrants' temporary residency and deporting them could destabilize the region, according to a Washington Post report.

Senate Democrats are investigating the cables, and recently referred their findings to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Post reported.

Despite the warnings from senior diplomats, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson joined other top Trump administration officials in pressing the Homeland Security Department to end the immigrants' Temporary Protected Status.

In an Oct. 31 letter to then-acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke, Tillerson argued that conditions in Central America and Haiti had improved to the point that the TPS protections were no longer necessary.

But Duke was reluctant to end the protections, and after consulting with a top aide, decided that she was not comfortable with ending the immigrants' TPS, the Post reported.

That prompted a frustrated phone call to Duke by White House chief of staff John Kelly, who had himself served atop the Homeland Security Department for the first six months of the Trump administration.

According to the Post, the Trump administration has so far cancelled TPS for 195,000 Salvadorans, 46,000 Haitian and, most recently, 57,000 Hondurans. Some 273,000 U.S.-born children have parents from those countries covered under the TPS.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent a letter to the GAO requesting an independent investigation into the administration officials' actions, in which he said that Tillerson had deliberately disregarded the advice of career State Department officials.

"I am concerned that the Department of State, under then-Secretary of State Tillerson’s leadership, acted in a way that jeopardized U.S. national security and put at risk the physical safety of current beneficiaries of the Temporary Protected Status program," Menendez wrote, according to the Post.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administ...rotections-for

Good for Tillerson and good for Trump. Full speed ahead to end the TPS on earliest possible date and removed them from the country.

Give them 90 day notice effective immediately...if you are on ANY public assistance it will be cut off in 90 days from today.

It would behoove you to sell out, pack up and go home on your own. Send your family members back to get jobs and housing.

Terminate TPS from anywhere. We are NOT the dumping ground for the World.

Say "thank you" America and go home with dignity with your mouth shut, your Flag in your luggage, and take your family with you.

Instead, these globalists traitors prefer large numbers of illegal immigrants to destabilize the United States of America!