Venezuelans in Boston decry Trump administration's termination of protected status

About 350,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. learned in recent days that their legal immigration status is set to expire in two months. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem decided not to renew Temporary Protected status for this group of Venezuelans, saying it’s not in the interest of the United States.

TPS is for people who fled their countries due to violence and other safety risks.

A Venezuelan immigrant who lives in Boston and has TPS, a music teacher named Andreina, is scrambling to get a new legal status before the April deadline.

She told WBUR's Simón Rios, in Spanish translated into English, that she believes the government’s move is wrong.

"We pay taxes here, we work hard, we have Social Security numbers. And thanks to that, we’ve been able to build a life here. We came to the U.S. escaping a dictatorship of a magnitude you can only understand by experiencing it," she said.

WBUR agreed to use only Andreina’s first name, because of her immigration status.

The termination of TPS comes as President Trump has continued to label Venezuelans as a threat. Andreina says that’s a false stereotype.

"The president is using this narrative about Venezuelans being criminals, and it gives the average citizen the right to offend us and see us as sub-humans," she said. "The only difference between me and a person who was born here is the randomness of life — nothing more than that.”

Julio Henríquez, an immigration and human rights lawyer in Boston, said the White House is conflating immigration law with criminal law — two distinct branches designed for different purposes.

"Immigrants should be dealt with with immigration law, criminals should be dealt with with criminal law," he said. "And the conflation of both is nonsensical and only an excuse to criminalize migrants."

Henríquez said the ending of TPS will have big ramifications for the community here, where thousands of Venezuelans have settled over the past decade. He called the decision "arbitrary and capricious."