Ohio AG and 17 other people question the protections for immigrants from dangerous countries • Ohio Capital Journal

Ohio Attorney General, Dave Yost, and another 17 Republican General Prosecutors are questioning the temporary protection status for immigrants from 17 countries in difficulties. They are asking President Donald Trump’s officials. explicitly anti -immigrant administration to review if the protections are necessary.

in a statement On Tuesday, Yost said that some have been allowed to remain in the United States even after it was “sure for them to return home.” However, he did not appoint any of those countries, and the publicly available reports make it difficult to guess which places could refer to.

He asked his office if he could appoint a person with temporary protection status that could safely return to his country of origin. A spokeswoman replied that it was not the work of the attorney general to make such determinations.

An immigrant defender said that the letter was another way of scaring vulnerable immigrants and bringing them to the shadows. It is similar to the false statements last summer of now President Donald Trump, vice president JD Vance and others that Haitians under temporary protection status in Springfield were steal and eat the pets of their neighborsShe said. That led to dozens of bomb threats and Violence reports Against immigrants.

“It’s about intimidation,” said Lynn Section, founder of Ohio Immigrant Alliance. “It’s about destabilization. These are authoritarian tactics that make people feel insecure in their homes and communities. It’s really sad. JD Vance himself brought violence to Springfield. ”

Long data problems

Yost and the other general prosecutors sent a letter to Kristi Noem, head of the Trump National Security Department. Now confirmed, Noem has the power to grant or revoke the temporary protection status, or TPS. His farewell speech last week as the governor of North Dakota was splashed from markedly anti -immigrant rhetoric.

The Trump administration is giving immigration officials an expanded authority to quickly deport immigrants, including the people to whom the Biden administration allowed the country to be temporarily entered under probation authority, according to an internal memorandum, State Newsroom. reported this weekend.

“TPS beneficiaries represent more than 1 million immigrants residing in the United States and otherwise would not have legal status,” said the letter of general prosecutors to Noem. “Converting TPS into a long -term residence license frustrates the objectives of the Congress and only increases financial and government pressure on states.”

In addition to Yost, the General Prosecutors of Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia Western and Wyoming signed the letter to Noem.

The letter highlights the fact that the word “temporary” is in the name of the designation and that people in some countries have had a temporary protection status for decades.

“Honduras, for example, received TPS for the first time after the passage of a hurricane in 1998 and the DHS bases its current TPS designation on ‘persistent’ conditions of that same event,” said the letter. “The extensions of the TPS that cover decades have become routine.”

According to the legal language provided by the Yost office, the Secretary of National Security can grant the TPS if it finds “That there are extraordinary and temporary conditions in the foreign state that prevent foreigners who are national state to return to the State in security conditions.”

Section said general prosecutors are misunderstanding the law.

“It’s called ‘temporary state of protection,” he said. “It is not called ‘short -term protection state’. When a crisis occurs, whether it is a natural disaster or a political crisis, years are needed to recover. They are looking at the word “temporary” as if it meant short term. But the only thing that means is that Congress said we will give it a break and we will not deport it because it is dangerous to send it back. ”

Heartbreaking conditions

In its 2023 Report on Human Rights PracticesThe US Department of State said the following about Honduras, the country that the republicans cite as a country designated to receive TPS for almost 27 years:

“Important human rights issues included credible reports of: arbitrary or illegitimate murders; torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or penalties by government agents; hard and potentially mortal penitentiary conditions; arrest or arbitrary detention; serious problems with the independence of the Judiciary; Serious restrictions on freedom of expression and press, including threats against media members by criminal elements; serious government corruption; generalized gender violence, including domestic violence, sexual violence and feminicide; and crimes that imply violence or threats of violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or intersex. ”

In fact, of the 17 countries designated for TPS, 11 have the most severe travel warning of the State Department: Do not travel. Three have the next highest position, reconside the trip. And three have the second lowest level, so they must have greater caution.

Reports on these last countries (Cameroon, Nepal and El Salvador) indicate how risky it could be to return there, especially if you are not a tourist of a developed country.

of Human Rights Watch World Report 2024 He says that El Salvador had been beaten by the violence of the gangs, and then “a The state of emergency (which was) adopted in March 2022 that suspended basic rights remains in force. The authorities have committed generalized human rights violations, including mass arbitrary arbitrations, forced disappearances, ill -treatment during the detention and violations of due process. ”

The Human Rights Watch report for Cameroon Detailed “The continuous confrontations between armed groups and government forces in the Anglophone regions and the extreme northern Cameroon seriously affected civilians, and in the second half of the year the cases of illegitimate murders, kidnappings and raids in villages increased. ”

And the 2023 report of the State Department for Nepal described “simportant human rights issues (including) credible reports of: arbitrary or illegitimate murders, including extrajudicial murders; Torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or penalties by the government; arbitrary detention; Serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media, including violence or threats of violence against journalists and unjustified arrests of journalists. ”

Those are the TPS countries that the State Department considers safer of the 17 to travel. The letter that general prosecutors wrote to Noem criticized former president Joe Biden for extending the designations of temporary protection status for Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela, in addition to El Salvador.

Ukraine has been devastated by war Since Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded in 2022. Sudan has been torn by a civil war since 2023, which promoted the enlistment of soldiers, sexual violence and other atrocities. And in Venezuela, the socialist government has made the economy so dysfunctional that 90% live in poverty.and has the highest crime rate in the world.

Sure?

In a statement he announced that he and other Republican general prosecutors requested a review of TPS designations, Yost said that some could safely return to their countries of origin.

“This program has been applied too lax, allowing non -citizens to live here indefinitely, even after it is safe for them to return home,” The statement He quoted Yost, who last week announced 2026 postulate for governorAs I said.

When asked if Ohio’s attorney general could appoint one, his spokesman said that this was not his job.

“Anyway, Ohio’s attorney general is not the person with authority to issue judgments about the TPS, ”said spokeswoman Bethany McCorkle, in an email. “That is why the letter does not demand that the designation of any particular nation be removed immediately.

“What the letter asks for is for the secretary to review the country’s conditions and exercise their judgment on the status of the countries. that have been designated as protected ‘temporarily’ for years, sometimes decades, based on the same isolated events, ”he added. “If the conditions are currently insecure in a certain country due to new/current factors that would reach the high level established by the Congress for the TPS, then the secretary would have discretion to grant the TPS on that basis.”

The call to an administration directed by a vehemently anti -immigrant president Reviewing and possibly denying immigrants protection status might not be in tune with public opinion. A December survey sponsored by the National Immigration Forum and the Bulfinch group said that 73% of Americans agreed that immigration policies should protect the persecuted and keep families intact.

Section, from the Ohio immigrants alliance, He said that the true objective of the letter is to distract the public from the true cause of the suffering of many Americans.

“This generates headlines, it gives praise of the people they are trying to incite,” he said. “They are trying to distract themselves from their broader agenda, which is to get greater tax exemptions for corporations and help the rich, while average people have to work in multiple jobs just to pay the rent.”