US ends protections for nearly 90,000 Hondurans

Nearly 90,000 Hondurans who have lived in the US for at least two decades could be forced to leave the country after President Donald Trump's administration decided to end protections for the immigrants, the media reported.

The Homeland Security Department's announcement on Friday brings the total number of immigrants for whom the administration has decided to end temporary protected status in the last year to more than 425,000, many who have lived in the US legally for decades, reports CNN.

The announcement ends the temporary protected status designation for Honduras that was put in place after Hurricane Mitch struck in 1998.

There are about 86,000 current recipients, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services' (USCIS) count at the end of October, and all of them must have lived in the US continuously since at least 1999.

They will have 18 months to either leave the country or make other arrangements to stay, if they can qualify for visas some other way.

Temporary protected status must be extended for countries every couple of years, and the deadline to make a decision on Honduras was approaching this weekend.

The Trump administration has opted to end almost all of the temporary protected status designations on the books this year, including those for nearly 60,000 immigrants from Haiti, more than 250,000 from El Salvador, about 5,000 from Nicaragua and nearly 15,000 from Nepal.

The Central American countries have had their temporary protected status extended by previous administrations continuously since the 1990s and early 2000s.

--IANS

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