A senior House lawmaker said Thursday he would push to ensure the U.S. gives some people from the Caribbean legal status to remain in the United States in the wake of Hurricane Irma.
Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., wants the Department of Homeland Security to provide temporary protection status to Caribbean islanders whose home countries have been ravaged by one of the worst hurricanes in decades. The program was established to give a reprieve to people who can’t return to their home country for reasons including natural disasters, but it has grown controversial within the Trump administration, where some officials believe it has been abused in recent years.
“In particular, the administration must provide Temporary Protected Status [TPS] to Caribbean citizens who lived directly in Irma’s destructive path but are currently residing in the United States and unable to return to their home countries,” Engel, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said Thursday. “I plan to lead efforts to ensure that this happens.”
“I urge the Trump administration to assist our friends in the Caribbean and Puerto Rico with all available resources,” Engel said.
Such a move would have significant ramifications for Trump’s immigration policy. There were about four million Caribbean immigrants in the United States as of 2014, according to a recent assessment from the Migration Policy Institute. That figure included approximately 232,000 people who are in the country illegally.
The proposal could provide a neat resolution to part of an uncomfortable problem: how to set policy for immigrants who were given TPS due to emergencies in their home countries, only to remain in the program and the United States long after the crisis had passed. “The operative word in the law is ‘temporary,'” then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said in June. “It’s not meant to be an open-ended law, but a temporary law.”
Kelly, who is now White House chief of staff, said at the time that he expected to make a final decision on whether the Haitian beneficiaries would be allowed to remain in the program in November or December. “I will be looking for indicators,” he told Voice of America. “I’d have to look for indicators as to why we might extend it a short period into the future past January.”
The State Department issued a travel warning for Haiti on Tuesday night and authorized diplomats in the country to return to the United States if they so chose.
“The Department of State also warns U.S. citizens to carefully reconsider travel to Haiti due to Hurricane Irma, a category 5 storm projected to impact Haiti,” the bulletin said. “This storm may bring significant rainfall and wind that may result in life-threat[en]ing flooding, flash flooding, mudslides, and storm surge. Disruptions to travel and services are likely throughout the country.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not reply to a request for comment on Engel’s proposal.
