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The Trump administration is terminating protections for roughly 9,000 Nepali immigrants who were granted residency permits after their home country was ravaged by a massive earthquake in 2015.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen announced Thursday that Nepali citizens living in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status will have to leave the country by June 24 next year or face deportation, marking the Trump administration’s latest effort to oust immigrants living under provisional protections.
“The Secretary determined that the disruption of living conditions in Nepal from the April 2015 earthquake and subsequent aftershocks that served as the basis for its TPS designation have decreased to a degree that they should no longer be regarded as substantial,” DHS said in a statement. “The current TPS designation must be terminated.”
The 7.8-magnitude earthquake ripped through Nepal on April 25, 2015, and killed nearly 9,000 people. Powerful aftershocks rocked the country for months, culminating in a 7.3-magnitude quake on May 12, 2015, that killed another 218 people.
A majority of Nepalis with TPS status live in the greater New York City area.
Adhikaar, a Nepali immigration advocacy group with offices in Woodside, Queens, blasted Nielsen’s announcement as heartless, noting more than 75% of infrastructure destroyed by the quake has not been rebuilt.
“This decision only comes to show that any glimmer of hope we had from this administration’s ability to follow the rule of law is now gone,” the organization said in a statement.
Immigration hawks in Trump’s administration have advocated for a sweeping end to the TPS program, resulting so far in the reversal of protections for 200,000 Salvadorans, 50,000 Haitians and a number of Nicaraguans and Sudanese. The administration has hinted that it will also terminate protections for 57,000 Hondurans.
Syria is the only country so far to see TPS protections for its citizens extended under the Trump administration. Roughly 6,000 Syrians live in the U.S. under the program, as their home country’s bloody civil war continues unabated.
Adhikaar called on Congress to reverse the Trump administration’s Thursday announcement, and urged its members to remain resilient.
“There is more we can do, and this fight is bound to grow from here,” the group said. “There is more to come, so stay connected and engaged as you have done for the last few months because more than ever we all need one another.”