Monday, Dec. 16, 2019 | 2 a.m.
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Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., took a commendable step last week in calling for the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general to investigate whether the Trump administration violated federal law in its attempts to rescind Temporary Protected Status for citizens of a number of foreign nations.
It was the right thing to do not only for the 4,000-plus TPS recipients living in Nevada, but for everyone in the state.
Rosen sought the investigation based on allegations of improper political interference in Homeland Security’s decision to rescind TPS protections for El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Sudan. At the center of her request is a court ruling in a lawsuit stemming from the decision, which says the Trump administration “changed the criteria applied by the prior administrations, and did so without any explanation or justification in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.” That measure, which has been in place since 1946, prohibits “arbitrary and capricious actions” by federal agencies, according to Rosen’s letter requesting the investigation.
“Other publicly available information shows a pattern of politically motivated decision-making regarding TPS,” wrote Rosen, a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Indeed, Trump has yet to offer any compelling reason for doing away with TPS.
The immigrants protected under the measure are productive, law-abiding members of our society — they have to be, or they’d lose their status. TPS recipients are required to stay out of legal trouble and be in solid shape financially in order to maintain their protections, for which they must reapply every 18 months. And by the way, they also must pay fees stemming from their reapplication.
So they work, pay taxes, send their kids to school and stay out of trouble with the law, or risk getting deported. Given that TPS came into being in 1990, some recipients have lived in the U.S. longer than they did in their home countries.
In short, they’re our co-workers, our neighbors, our fellow congregants at our houses of worship, our fellow school parents, and so on. In Las Vegas and other communities with sizable groups of TPS recipients, they’re also a strong part of our economy.
In other words, they’re Americans in every way except having a document designating them as full-fledged citizens.
The administration has tried to justify its actions publicly with an unsound argument that conditions have improved in the targeted countries and that TPS was intended to be temporary — true to its title.
But plaintiffs in the lawsuit uncovered behind-the-scenes evidence showing the White House pressing for an end to all TPS protections, current conditions be damned. In one example, the administration notes that DHS will recommend revocation of TPS for Sudan even while acknowledging conditions there are still too dangerous.
Clearly, the only purpose served by ending TPS is for Trump to look tough to the extremists in his base and keep them revved up about his re-election campaign.
Meanwhile, as Rosen points out in her letter, Trump’s actions already are hurting TPS recipients despite being hung up in court and therefore not finalized.
She reported to the inspector general, Joseph Cuffari, that TPS-protected Nevadans ran into trouble getting their driver’s licenses after U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services failed to update a software system the Department of Motor Vehicles uses to verify applicants’ legal status. Rosen said thousands of state residents may have been blocked from renewing their licenses.
“The driver’s license crisis is a direct result of the uncertainty surrounding TPS caused by the department’s politically motivated policy decisions,” she wrote.
Rosen asked for a full accounting of the decision-making process, including the names and job titles of everyone involved, the criteria for making the decision and whether the criteria differed from the norm.
Voters sent Rosen to Washington to protect the interests of all of Nevada’s residents and of the state at large, and that’s exactly what she’s doing in this instance.
The investigation she requested should be launched immediately.
