A document obtained by Sen. Eric Schmitt shows senior Biden administration advisers weighed new and extended deportation protections for Guatemalans, Ecuadorians, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans and other foreign nationals during the final weeks before President Donald Trump returned to office.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Senior advisers in the closing days of the Biden administration considered using Temporary Protected Status to shield more than 3.1 million additional noncitizens from deportation before President Donald Trump took office, according to an internal White House memo reported by Fox News.
The document outlined possible new designations and extensions for migrants from Guatemala, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela and several other countries. It also discussed how immigration advocates expected to challenge Trump administration attempts to end the protections in federal court.
Temporary Protected Status permits eligible foreign nationals from designated countries to remain and work in the United States when armed conflict, political instability, natural disasters or other extraordinary conditions make their return unsafe. Although the program is defined as temporary, designations and extensions can remain in place for years.
Trump sought during his first administration to terminate TPS protections for nationals of Haiti, Nepal, El Salvador, Sudan and other countries. Several of those efforts were blocked through litigation brought by immigration advocacy groups.
“Stakeholders argue that granting TPS will potentially protect many vulnerable people from President-elect Trump’s planned mass deportations,” the memo stated. “They argue that these protections are likely to hold in court, and they are prepared to litigate efforts to terminate or slow down the implementation of TPS for specified nations by the Trump Administration.”
The document acknowledged that earlier legal challenges succeeded partly because the first Trump administration had not developed a sufficient factual record to support ending the designations.
“[P]rior federal litigation brought by advocates during the first Trump administration was successful in halting [its] efforts to terminate TPS, though that was due in large part to [its] failure to produce a factual record in support of termination, which is something that could be rectified,” the memo said.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said he received the document from Archivist of the United States Edward Forst through his authority as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution.
Schmitt characterized the proposals as an attempt to create a large-scale deportation shield that would bind the incoming administration through years of court battles.
“Biden tried to turn TPS into a 3.1-million-person deportation shield, protect Tren de Aragua members, and trap President Trump in years of litigation,” Schmitt said.
He argued that such an action would have defied voters who had returned Trump and Republicans to power.
“The most disturbing part, Biden’s ‘Senior Advisors’ recommended he create 2.1 million NEW TPS designees in the last few weeks of his presidency, despite admitting TPS applications take 6 months,” Schmitt said.
“Luckily, that never happened and we have been deporting Ecuadorians and Guatemalans.”
The chart included in the memo estimated that approximately 1.5 million Guatemalans could have become eligible for protection, along with about 600,000 Ecuadorians, 464,000 Nicaraguans and 455,000 Venezuelans. Smaller populations from Ukraine, Sudan and Afghanistan were also listed.
Schmitt said those estimates brought the possible total to more than 3.1 million people.
Although the largest proposed expansion was not implemented, Schmitt said the memo still preceded a significant immigration action. One week after the January 2025 document was circulated — despite being mistakenly dated 2024 — Biden extended TPS protections covering nearly 1 million noncitizens.
Schmitt said that timing demonstrated the memo was not merely theoretical and had contributed to “a concrete, mass-migration action.”
The document reminded Biden that his administration had already granted TPS protections to Afghans, Cameroonians, Ethiopians, Burmese nationals, Lebanese, Ukrainians and Venezuelans while repeatedly extending protections for Haitians.
“The previous Administration unsuccessfully attempted to terminate TPS designations for Sudan, Nicaragua, Haiti, El Salvador, Nepal, and Honduras. Courts issued preliminary injunctions blocking the Trump Administration’s actions,” the memo stated. “Your administration took actions to resolve this litigation by either redesignating Haiti or rescinding the terminations.”
The memo also cited Trump’s 2024 campaign pledge to revoke TPS protections for Haitians and predicted that his incoming administration would seek to terminate additional country designations.
Biden’s senior team had received requests from several Democratic senators to take further action before Trump’s inauguration. Those lawmakers included Sens. Michael Bennet of Colorado, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Richard Durbin of Illinois, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Alex Padilla of California.
“In addition, some stakeholders are requesting that your Administration designate nationals from new countries, most notably Ecuador and Guatemala, for TPS,” the memo stated.
Schmitt also shared recent Senate floor remarks in which he argued that the United States should not become a “get-rich-quick scheme for the third world.” He compared efforts to delay immigration enforcement with property owners being prevented from removing squatters
The proposals were not adopted in full, but the memo shows that Biden advisers actively considered expanding temporary protections to millions of foreign nationals while anticipating that advocates would use federal litigation to slow or block the incoming Trump administration’s deportation policies.
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