Donald Trump plans to revoke the legal status of 240,000 Ukrainian refugees in the US

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to the largest European refugee crisis since World War II. According to the UNHCR’s data, over 6.3 million Ukrainians are refugees within Europe, mainly in Germany and Poland. More than 560K Ukrainian refugees have gotten out of Europe. Remember, the vast majority of these refugees are women and children – Ukrainian men of all ages have mostly stayed in their country to fight. After the Russian invasion, the Biden administration gave temporary legal status to 240,000 Ukrainian refugees entering America. The Biden administration worked with non-profits, churches and various agencies to bring in as many refugees as possible, as safely as possible. Well, now Donald Trump is going to revoke that legal status from Ukrainian refugees and deport them all. And that’s not all – it’s likely that hundreds of thousands of Afghans, Cubans, Haitians and more will see their legal status revoked as well.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is planning to revoke temporary legal status for some 240,000 Ukrainians who fled the conflict with Russia, a senior Trump official and three sources familiar with the matter said, potentially putting them on a fast-track to deportation. The move, expected as soon as April, would be a stunning reversal of the welcome Ukrainians received under President Joe Biden’s administration.

The planned rollback of protections for Ukrainians was underway before Trump publicly feuded with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last week. It is part of a broader Trump administration effort to strip legal status from more than 1.8 million migrants allowed to enter the U.S. under temporary humanitarian parole programs launched under the Biden administration, the sources said. U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the department had no announcements at this time. The White House and Ukrainian embassy did not respond to requests for comment.

A Trump executive order issued on January 20 called for DHS to “terminate all categorical parole programs.” The administration plans to revoke parole for about 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans as soon as this month, the Trump official and one of the sources familiar with the matter said, requesting anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The plan to revoke parole for those nationalities was first reported by CBS News. Migrants stripped of their parole status could face fast-track deportation proceedings, according to an internal ICE email seen by Reuters.

The Biden programs were part of a broader effort to create temporary legal pathways to deter illegal immigration and provide humanitarian relief. In addition to the 240,000 Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion, and the 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, these programs covered more than 70,000 Afghans escaping the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

[From Reuters]

Particularly with the Ukrainian refugees, it’s easy to forget that this was an effort across party lines, to ensure that America was pulling its weight when it came to taking in refugees. Churches were asking the Biden administration for help in getting Ukrainian refugees help and support. Then those same churches told their people to vote for Donald Trump. I keep describing everything having to do with the Trump administration as “catastrophic,” but that’s exactly what it is. The cruelty, the bad policy, the complete disregard for human life…it’s catastrophic.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid and Cover Images.