During a White House press briefing on Monday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about the Trump administration's revocation of Temporary Protected Status for migrants from Honduras and Nicaragua.
00:00One more, kind of a little bit of breaking news, the Department of Homeland Security is moving to end the TPS status on Honduran and Nicaraguan migrants.
00:09Any plans to adding additional countries that you could be targeting, just a reaction?
00:13Sure. Well, I won't get ahead of the Department of Homeland Security on additional countries, but as you pointed out, they did end temporary protective status for Nicaraguans and Hondurans in this country,
00:23because TPS, temporary protective status, is temporary by definition. It is not meant to be a permanent path to residency or citizenship here in the United States of America.
00:34It was originally granted to Nicaraguans following a natural disaster in 1999. That doesn't sound very temporary to me.
00:43And as well as Hondurans in 1999 after the impact of Hurricane Mitch in 1998.
00:48And so this administration is doing what it promised to do.
00:54And if individuals from these countries want to come here, they have a legal pathway to do it, but temporary protective status was never meant to be permanent.
01:02The previous administration abused this status and this parole program, essentially treating it as such, and we're not going to tolerate that any further.
