The federal government is ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans and Afghans, putting more than 9,000 Afghans and 350,000+ Venezuelans at risk of deportation starting as early as July 2025.

Ascentria Care Alliance stands in firm opposition to this decision: These actions not only jeopardize the safety and wellbeing of individuals who sought refuge through legal means in the United States, but they also threaten to upend the families and communities they have helped strengthen, and the economy they actively sustain.

Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is a life-saving legal protection granted to individuals from countries experiencing armed conflict, natural disasters, or extraordinary conditions. It allows them to live and work in the U.S. temporarily while their home countries remain unsafe. The Trump administration’s move to revoke Venezuelan TPS and terminate Afghan TPS will force thousands into impossible decisions: remain in the U.S. without legal status, unable to work, or return to countries where they face persecution, violence, and even death.

In Venezuela, systemic violence and political instability persist. In Afghanistan, public executions and severe restrictions on women and girls continue under Taliban rule. To claim these countries are safe is to ignore lived realities and credible human rights reports.

These decisions are not abstract policy shifts, they are deeply personal. At Ascentria, we work every day with Venezuelan, Afghan, Haitian, and other TPS holders. We know their stories. They are caregivers tending to older adults and those with disabilities, interpreters who supported U.S. military operations, students striving toward a better future, and essential workers who keep our communities running. They have become integral to our communities and the workforce of many organizations, including here at Ascentria.

TPS holders fill essential roles in caregiving, construction, food service, transportation, hospitality, and education – sectors that remain short-staffed and heavily reliant on a stable, authorized workforce. In healthcare and elder care especially, TPS holders provide critical support to aging populations, allowing older adults to live with dignity and independence.

To strip them of the ability to work and live safely is to actively undermine the stability of the care systems we all rely on.

The economic cost of ending TPS is staggering. According to the American Immigration Council, TPS holders contribute approximately $2.3 billion annually in federal, state, and local taxes and hold over $10 billion in spending power. Removing their legal ability to work would not only disrupt essential industries, it would also undercut local economies, reduce tax revenues, and increase strain on social systems already under pressure.

These individuals are not a burden, they are a backbone.

Many Venezuelan and Haitian TPS holders are also raising U.S.-born children, children who now face the terrifying possibility of being separated from their parents or uprooted from the only home they’ve ever known.

The trauma of family separation or sudden displacement can have lasting consequences on a child’s mental health, educational outcomes, and long-term success. These ripple effects are not theoretical – they are real, measurable, and preventable.

This is a moment of reckoning. It is not enough to offer protection during crises and revoke it, when the danger still remains, due to a political shift. We cannot ask people to face the very danger they fled, especially after they have invested so deeply in their communities. This is a betrayal of trust, of promises made, and of the American values we claim to uphold.