US President Donald Trump announced on Thursday, the 6th of March, that he will soon decide whether to revoke the temporary legal residency status of some 240 000 Ukrainians who fled the country when Russia invaded it, with a possibility that their deportation would be accelerated. This was officially announced after Reuters reported that his administration was planning to take such a step.
Such a move would be a dramatic change from the way Ukrainians were received under the administration of President Joe Biden
“We don’t want to hurt anybody, we certainly don’t want to hurt them, and I will look into that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked about the revocation and deportation of Ukrainian refugees. “Some people think it’s appropriate and some people don’t, and I will make a decision very soon.”
The planned revocation of Ukrainian refugee status would be part of a broader Trump administration effort to strip legal status from more than 1.8 million migrants allowed in the US under temporary humanitarian programmes launched under the Biden administration, a senior Trump official and three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
ALL FOUR SAID THAT A DECISION ON LIFTING THE STATUS OF THE UKRAINIANS COULD BE TAKEN AS EARLY AS APRIL. THEY SAID PLANS TO REVOKE THEIR STATUS WERE BEING DRAWN UP BEFORE TRUMP PUBLICLY CLASHED WITH UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY LAST WEEK.
White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt denied the agency’s report in a post on X, saying that “no decision has been made at this time”.
Tricia McLaughlin, spokeswoman for the US Department of Homeland Security, said on Wednesday that the department had no new announcements. Ukrainian government agencies did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump’s executive order issued on the 20th of January called on the Department of Homeland Security to “terminate all conditional parole programmes”.
The administration plans to also cancel it for some 530 000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans as early as this month, according to a Trump official and a source who asked to remain anonymous.
Migrants who are granted this residency parole could face fast-track deportation proceedings, according to an internal US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) email leaked to the agency.
Immigrants who cross the border illegally may be subject to fast-track deportation proceedings for two years after entry. But for those who entered legally but who have not been officially “admitted” to the US, such as those with a conditional parole, there is no time limit for fast-track deportation, the email said.
Biden’s programs were part of a broader effort to create temporary legal options to deter illegal immigration and provide humanitarian relief.
Immigration has always been a focus of President Donald Trump’s administration. During his first term in office, the administration implemented 472 immigration measures to curb both legal and illegal entry into the US.