MORE IMMIGRATION MOVES. On Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that the government is ending Temporary Protected Status for thousands of Somalis living in the United States. Fox News reported that the action will apply to the 2,471 Somalis currently residing in the U.S. with TPS designation, plus 1,383 more who have pending applications, for a total of 3,854.

According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the United States can grant TPS to residents of a country “due to conditions in the country that temporarily prevent the country’s nationals from returning safely.” Some of those conditions are “ongoing armed conflict (such as civil war); an environmental disaster (such as earthquake or hurricane) or an epidemic; [and] other extraordinary and temporary conditions.” TPS allows residents of those countries to stay in the United States until conditions improve in their own country, but the U.S. government stresses that “TPS is a temporary benefit that does not lead to lawful permanent resident status or give any other immigration status.”

Congress created Temporary Protected Status in 1990. In the years since, critics say the system has evolved into one in which temporary status can sometimes become de facto permanent status. For example, the George H.W. Bush administration gave Somalia TPS on September 16, 1991. Since then, it has been renewed or re-designated 27 times. For Somalia, “temporary” became a designation lasting over three decades.

Until Noem’s action. “Temporary means temporary,” the secretary said in a statement. “Country conditions in Somalia have improved to the point that it no longer meets the law’s requirement for Temporary Protected Status. Further, allowing Somali nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to our national interests. We are putting Americans first.”

The move obviously resonates in the context of the giant Somali fraud scandal in Minnesota, in which accused criminals, most of them Somalis, allegedly stole as much as $9 billion in taxpayer dollars in a social services scam. But the administration of President Donald Trump has been reducing TPS since he entered office.

Last year, Noem ended more than two decades of Temporary Protected Status for Honduras, which was first designated in January 1999. She did the same for TPS for Nicaragua, which also began in January 1999, and El Salvador, which began in March 2001. Noem also ended TPS for several other countries, including Burma, Ethiopia, Haiti, Lebanon, Nepal, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Yemen, among others. However, lawsuits have slowed some action.

It is all part of the administration keeping a Trump campaign promise. Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump said he would cut back on TPS, saying it was crazy for “temporary” programs to go on for decades. Now, he is doing what he said he would do. The TPS action is just part of a series of actions that you have read about, deportations, border security, and more, that have dramatically reduced immigration after the Biden years, when immigration numbers, especially illegal immigration numbers, skyrocketed. The sheer speed of illegal immigrant arrivals during the Biden administration was breathtaking, and now the Trump team is restoring order and balance to the system.