Hondurans, Nicaraguans are latest to lose TPS deportation protections under Trump crackdown
By Tim Padgett
July 7, 2025 at 5:56 PM EDT
The Trump administration on Monday cancelled Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for 76,000 Hondurans and Nicaraguans. And both groups, which have large communities in South Florida, are denouncing the decision as unfair for migrants who've spent more than a quarter century in the U.S.
Some 72,000 migrants from Honduras and 4,000 from Nicaragua hold TPS, which was granted to them after Hurricane Mitch destroyed their Central American countries in 1998.
The TPS designation shielded them from deportation from the U.S. And since then it's been regularly renewed, every 18 months, as political and gang violence ravaged those countries in the decades after Mitch.
The administration now insists it’s safe for both groups to return home and it’s revoking their TPS, which just expired over the weekend, making them deportable in 60 days.
In a statement ending TPS for Nicaraguans, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said their stay in the U.S. "was never meant to last 25 years." She made similar remarks about ending TPS for Hondurans in a separate announcement.
But it's precisely because Honduran and Nicaraguan TPS holders have been in the U.S. so long that administration critics say it would be a cruel to haul them back to their home countries — whose political and economic conditions, they argue, have hardly improved as amply as U.S. officials, like Noem, suggest.
"Most of these people now have businesses here, they're homeowners, they pay their taxes — they have children that were born in the United States," says Miami immigration advocate and Nicaraguan-American Claudio Acevedo.
"So to all of a sudden uproot them this way to these countries after more than two decades here seems very unjust."
READ MORE: 'Devastating' Supreme Court order allows Trump to strip TPS protections from Venezuelans
Honduras' gang-related homicide rate was the world's worst a decade ago, but it has since declined almost three-fold — a factor in the administration's decision to terminate Honduran TPS.
Still, gang violence remains rampant in Honduras. And Acevedo says it’s especially harsh to send those people to the brutal Ortega dictatorship that has ruled Nicaragua the past 18 years — a regime that, if it even agrees to receive Nicaraguan deportees from the U.S., often considers them to be political threats.
“Everybody in Washington knows the human rights violation crisis in Nicaragua," Acevedo pointed out.
"Too many times in the past when we've seen fellow Nicaraguan countrymen deported back to the country, they get off the plane and the next thing you know they disappear or they’re in jail."
The impact of the Trump administration's decision is eased somewhat by the fact that more than 20,000 of the Honduran TPS holders, and more than 1,000 of those from Nicaragua, have over the years gained green cards and other forms of legal residency in the U.S., which shields them from deportation after losing TPS.
Even so, advocates like Acevedo say the straits the majority of the Hondurans and Nicaraguans now face is a result of the failure of Congress — which created the TPS program in 1990 — to pass immigration reform. That, they say, might have created paths to more permanent residency for TPS holders who've been allowed to stay in the U.S. for extended periods.
"TPS shouldn't have been the last step," Acevedo said. "Immigration reform should have been and should still be the next step to fill out the TPS program."
Last fall the Biden administration declined to extend the July 5, 2025, expiration date for Nicaraguan TPS — a move that stunned the expat community given the dictatorship back in Nicaragua.
In a more massive move, Trump is also trying to end TPS for close to 1 million Venezuelans and Haitians — whose home countries are also haunted by severe dictatorship, economic and humanitarian crisis and, in Haiti's case, virtual gang rule.
In those cases, too, Trump says it's safe for people to return home. But lawsuits have been filed in federal courts arguing Trump is violating TPS' intent by sending its beneficiaries back to those on-the-ground realities.
In recent weeks, federal judges have at least blocked Trump's attempt to end TPS for those Venezuelans and Haitians before their benefit expires.
But in the case of Venezuelans, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled the Trump administration can move ahead with stripping them of TPS while the case plays out in the lower federal courts.
Some 72,000 migrants from Honduras and 4,000 from Nicaragua hold TPS, which was granted to them after Hurricane Mitch destroyed their Central American countries in 1998.
The TPS designation shielded them from deportation from the U.S. And since then it's been regularly renewed, every 18 months, as political and gang violence ravaged those countries in the decades after Mitch.
The administration now insists it’s safe for both groups to return home and it’s revoking their TPS, which just expired over the weekend, making them deportable in 60 days.
In a statement ending TPS for Nicaraguans, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said their stay in the U.S. "was never meant to last 25 years." She made similar remarks about ending TPS for Hondurans in a separate announcement.
But it's precisely because Honduran and Nicaraguan TPS holders have been in the U.S. so long that administration critics say it would be a cruel to haul them back to their home countries — whose political and economic conditions, they argue, have hardly improved as amply as U.S. officials, like Noem, suggest.
"Most of these people now have businesses here, they're homeowners, they pay their taxes — they have children that were born in the United States," says Miami immigration advocate and Nicaraguan-American Claudio Acevedo.
"So to all of a sudden uproot them this way to these countries after more than two decades here seems very unjust."
READ MORE: 'Devastating' Supreme Court order allows Trump to strip TPS protections from Venezuelans
Honduras' gang-related homicide rate was the world's worst a decade ago, but it has since declined almost three-fold — a factor in the administration's decision to terminate Honduran TPS.
Still, gang violence remains rampant in Honduras. And Acevedo says it’s especially harsh to send those people to the brutal Ortega dictatorship that has ruled Nicaragua the past 18 years — a regime that, if it even agrees to receive Nicaraguan deportees from the U.S., often considers them to be political threats.
“Everybody in Washington knows the human rights violation crisis in Nicaragua," Acevedo pointed out.
"Too many times in the past when we've seen fellow Nicaraguan countrymen deported back to the country, they get off the plane and the next thing you know they disappear or they’re in jail."
The impact of the Trump administration's decision is eased somewhat by the fact that more than 20,000 of the Honduran TPS holders, and more than 1,000 of those from Nicaragua, have over the years gained green cards and other forms of legal residency in the U.S., which shields them from deportation after losing TPS.
Even so, advocates like Acevedo say the straits the majority of the Hondurans and Nicaraguans now face is a result of the failure of Congress — which created the TPS program in 1990 — to pass immigration reform. That, they say, might have created paths to more permanent residency for TPS holders who've been allowed to stay in the U.S. for extended periods.
"TPS shouldn't have been the last step," Acevedo said. "Immigration reform should have been and should still be the next step to fill out the TPS program."
Last fall the Biden administration declined to extend the July 5, 2025, expiration date for Nicaraguan TPS — a move that stunned the expat community given the dictatorship back in Nicaragua.
In a more massive move, Trump is also trying to end TPS for close to 1 million Venezuelans and Haitians — whose home countries are also haunted by severe dictatorship, economic and humanitarian crisis and, in Haiti's case, virtual gang rule.
In those cases, too, Trump says it's safe for people to return home. But lawsuits have been filed in federal courts arguing Trump is violating TPS' intent by sending its beneficiaries back to those on-the-ground realities.
In recent weeks, federal judges have at least blocked Trump's attempt to end TPS for those Venezuelans and Haitians before their benefit expires.
But in the case of Venezuelans, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled the Trump administration can move ahead with stripping them of TPS while the case plays out in the lower federal courts.