Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) released a newly obtained memo from the Biden administration that revealed officials advised the former president to expand Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for migrants prior to leaving office.
“Stakeholders argue that granting TPS will potentially protect many vulnerable people from President-elect Trump’s planned mass deportations,” the memo reads, adding, “They argue that these protections are likely to hold in court, and they are prepared to litigate efforts to terminate or slow down the implementation of TPS for specified nations by the Trump Administration.”
“While it is impossible to predict with certainty the likelihood of success of any future litigation, prior Federal litigation brought by advocates during the first Trump administration was successful in halting the Trump Administration’s efforts to terminate TPS, though that was due in large part to the prior Administration’s failure to produce a factual record in support of termination, which is something that could be rectified,” the memo explained.
The memo weighed designating Venezuela with TPS, a move that Biden’s advisors warned would lead Republicans to argue that “YOU provided amnesty to Tren de Aragua gang members.”
Schmitt wrote on social media that in the most “disturbing” part of the memorandum, the advisors recommended that Biden “create 2.1 million NEW TPS designees in the last few weeks of his presidency, despite admitting TPS applications take 6 months.”
“Luckily, that never happened and we have been deporting Ecuadorians and Guatemalans,” he wrote. Ecuador was slated to receive a TPS designation affecting 600,000 people, and Guatemala’s potential TPS designation would have protected 1.5 million people.
