Thousands of Central Americans and Haitians living in the United States under special status no longer need to be shielded from deportation, the US Department of State told Homeland Security officials this week, according to the Washington Post.
A programme known as Temporary Protection Status, set up in 1990, exempts foreign nationals from being deported to home countries deemed unstable because of natural disasters or armed conflict. It protects more than 300,000 people living in the United States.
Citing unnamed officials, the Post reported on Friday that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a letter to acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke on Tuesday that conditions in Central America and Haiti that had been used to justify the protection no longer applied.
The Department of Homeland Security has until Monday to announce its plans for about 57,000 Hondurans and 2,500 Nicaraguans whose protections under the programme will expire in early January, the Post said.
A State Department representative said no decisions had been announced regarding the program for nationals of Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras or Nicaragua, and that the department had no comment on discussions with the Homeland Security Department.
The Homeland Security Department did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The Post quoted a Homeland Security spokesman as saying Duke had made no decision on the programme.
Last month people close to Republican President Donald Trump’s administration said the White House was considering anti-immigration activists’ appeals to pull back on the programme.
Trump campaigned last year on a promise to deport large numbers of immigrants, a racially tinged political theme that won him passionate support among some US voters.
Immigration advocacy groups fear the Trump administration will curtail the program by refusing to renew the protected status of some of the nine countries covered: El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The US government released from custody a 10-year-old Mexican girl with cerebral palsy on Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union said, 10 days after the ambulance taking her to surgery in Texas was stopped at a US Border Patrol checkpoint.
Rosa Maria Hernandez has lived in the United States illegally since her family brought over the border to Texas when she was 3 months old.
Her detention was criticised by civil rights groups and some Democratic politicians who oppose the crackdown by Republican President Donald Trump on illegal immigration.
The circumstances of Hernandez’s release into her family’s care were not immediately clear.
It came three days after the ACLU sued the US government, saying the government arrested the child without a necessary warrant and was violating her rights, in part by denying her doctor’s orders for follow-up appointments in the days after the surgery.
The US Department of Health and Human Services, which took over custody of Hernandez after she was detained by immigration officials, said in a statement it could not comment on individual cases, but that it treats each child “with the utmost care”.
Hernandez needed gallbladder surgery last Tuesday, and was taken in an ambulance with her cousin, a US
citizen, from Laredo, on the border with Mexico where the girl lives with her family, to a hospital in Corpus Christi, about 210km away.
Her ambulance had to pass through one of the dozens of US Customs and Border Patrol checkpoints set up on highways close to the Mexico border.
The border agents allowed Hernandez to proceed to the hospital and waited outside her room while she began her recovery before taking her into custody and driving her to a federal shelter in San Antonio, Texas, according to Leticia Gonzalez, a lawyer for the girl’s family, who filmed the encounter.
The US Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health declined to say if Hernandez or her family would have to meet with immigration officials again or have their case brought to court.
Michael Tan, an ACLU lawyer, said in a statement that Hernandez would “go home to heal” with her family.
“Despite our relief, Border Patrol’s decision to target a young girl at a children’s hospital remains unconscionable,” he said.