Over the last few weeks, Ever Chacon, a Venezuelan national who has been in the United States for two years, has barely slept. Every night, he worries about President Donald Trump’s determination to rid the country of newly arrived immigrants like him.
His fears accelerated on Feb. 1, when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that the administration would end the 2023 “temporary protected status” for Venezuelans. The designation allows nationals of certain countries to live and work in the United States without fear of deportation. It is set to expire on April 7.
“I live in distress. I dream that I’m being deported.” said Chacon, as he sat on his scooter on Valencia Street awaiting food orders to deliver. “It’s like I’m living in trauma over and over, where I receive a deportation letter and ICE agents show up to my house.”
Chacon applied for asylum upon his arrival, and received a work permit and Social Security number. He then applied for the 2023 Temporary Protected Status designation, but never received an answer. Now, with TPS off the table and the new administration in charge, he fears his asylum case is more likely to be denied.
Francisco Ugarte, the lead immigration attorney at the Public Defender’s Office, said that despite Noem’s announcement, the decision may not yet be definitive, and that not all people may immediately face deportation; each case is unique.
“There will undoubtedly be lawsuits from different constituencies,” said Ugarte. “Just because this decision was made recently doesn’t necessarily mean that will be the final decision.”
Ugarte called the Trump administration’s efforts “fear tactics.”
“The country can’t just deport people without any due process, and without people asserting their rights,” Ugarte said. “There’s a host of rights that people have, and if people assert their rights, the country won’t be able to just summarily deport people.”
While that might be true, Chacon and others are reading stories about planes full of immigrants being returned to Venezuela or ending up in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp.
The TPS designation was meant to give immigrants fleeing countries in political or economic turmoil a legal status that allows them to work. Venezuelans have received two TPS designations in the last five years. The first, in 2021, was granted on the grounds that the country’s economy and political situation was in freefall. The second, in 2023, declared that nothing had significantly improved, and, in fact, deadly landslides and flash floods across the country had made things even worse.
The first designation, which benefited 242,000 Venezuelans, is so far unaffected. Noem’s decision instead affects the nearly 350,000 Venezuelans who are part of the 2023 TPS group.
Also affected is a parole program that allowed 117,000 Venezuelans to enter the country.
Chacon left Venezuela in 2018, and lived in four other countries before arriving in the United States in January 2023. He considers himself an economic refugee, and said that, no matter how much he worked in Venezuela, his income was barely sufficient to buy food.
“I couldn’t even buy diapers for my baby,” said Chacon.
It’s unclear how many Venezuelans are in the Bay Area. About 770,000 lived in the United States as of 2023, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The majority, nearly 400,000, are in Florida, and about 23,100 live in California, most in Los Angeles. The population has increased dramatically — from some 184,000 in 2010 — as Venezuela’s economy deteriorated under President Nicolás Maduro.
Venezuela held elections in 2024 that many considered fraudulent. Repression intensified, and the United Nations called Venezuela‘s situation “one of the country’s most acute human crises in recent history.”
“I talk to my family, and I tell them that my time here may come to an end pretty soon.” he said, adding that he’s working 14 hours a day, seven days a week, hoping to save up in case he’s deported.
Chacon is not alone.
“I feel that pressure on my shoulders at all times. I live my life in fear now,” said another Venezuelan who asked to remain anonymous. “I’ve lived here since 2015, and I’ve never committed a crime. I work and I pay my taxes … I just ask for an opportunity.”
Rogelio Herrera, a Venezuelan national with TPS who has lived in the United States since August 2023, said he is only here to work.
“I know there are people doing bad things, but I came with the only focus of working to help my family,” said Herrera. “These decisions to revoke the TPS affect the ones who just really came to work.”
Luis Caceres, a Venezuelan national who’s lived in the country for a year and a half, doesn’t have TPS status, but fears the administration’s decision is going to affect his asylum case.
“I’d like people to know that we’re fighting for the same objective. We’re not all bad,” said. “The great majority of us just wanna work and do no harm.” said Caceres.
Ugarte recommended that immigrants talk to the person who helped them file their TPS application for more information, and for those who hadn’t applied for asylum, to do it online at USCIS, or to file in court if their removal procedures have started.
They can also call the San Francisco Immigrant and Legal Education Network for a free consultation.
Juanita Darling, a professor of international relations at San Francisco State University, said the administration’s move to end TPS for Venezuelans will have terrible consequences.
“It’s going to be devastating for the human beings who are involved. I think it is going to have a very negative effect on U.S. prestige in the world,” said Darling.
Thank you for telling the stories of our communities.
It’s been said before and should be said again: the only “dangerous illegal immigrant” is the South African who just stole everyone’s SSNs.
Just as a matter of law, not a single person in this article qualifies for legal asylum. They are all economic refugees, that does not qualify one for asylum.
Biden’s approach of letting in unlimited economic refugees, fed by smuggling, was what got trump elected. Direct line between Biden opening the border and trump’s election,
Human interest aside, it is just a fact. We have a need for additional workers, and how they were let in was politically toxic, but also lead to them being abused on the way here, and often getting abused here.
I hope the people who pushed for this type of under the table open border system are happy with trump, they caused his reelection.
“Just as a matter of law, not a single person in this article qualifies for legal asylum.”
If you’re not an immigration judge at an asylum hearing and/or the ICE officer making a determination, then you have no authority to make that call. And if you are, then you should lose your job for using social media to share your assessment.
He is taking a job from people who are here legally.
Sympathy for illegal immigrants like this guy shows a complete lack of sympathy for working-class Americans. It’s the progressives’ biggest problem: they spout a lot of philosophy but they hate the working class.
Since America is a continent, not a country, then he *is* a working-class American.
As you can see from my comment above, I am not exactly pro-Joe (and “progressives”) open boarder policy. But I think it helps not to lie to ourselves. No, whatever you call them (refugees, “illegals”, temporary protected status holders) are NOT taking jobs that citizens want. Not a lot of citizens looking to take jobs as door dashers, or back of the house restaurant staff, or cleaners, let alone as agricultural workers. And BTB, about 1/3 of those working on construction lack legal status. Find an Irish construction worker or mover – 90% chance they are here illegally.
We need a system that allows us to being in the people the economy needs, let them be treated fairly, but also not compete with US citizens. Trump is not getting us that system, and you and I will pay much more as a result…
How much rope will Democrats and Democratic Socialists provide Trump’s fascist administration before it hangs itself?
I won’t hold my breath to find out so long as they conspire with Republicans to allow profits to flow freely upward while all workers are used as pawns to facilitate that.
Knowing from experience how limited they are at providing any of us real help when we need it, I would not put all my faith in the ability of San Francisco’s comparatively generous legal services and “non-profits” to provide immigrants help either.
To believe Ever Chacon might have a stronger case against being deported if he claimed he had come to the US seeking “freedom” (rather than for economic reasons) would be a mistake because the oligarchs in charge don’t care about freedom for anyone but themselves.
They only care about getting richer and dividing the world’s spoils. (And… they happen to know, that Venezuela’s Maduro is hardly a real socialist.)
Much as Hitler manipulated Germans by blaming Jews for the Weimar Republic’s troubles (that included skyrocketing inflation), the claim that immigrants are responsible for rampant crime and America’s economic troubles are Big Lies being used by Trump to manipulate our overly burdened public in our grossly unequal society.
Immigrants get little in return for what they disproportionately contribute to America’s overall wealth, and native born Americans are much more likely to commit the crimes which immigrants are accused of.
Trump and his gang knows all of this: just watch how fast they are already attacking the democratic rights of everyone!
The only defense of immigrants, and ultimately of ourselves, will come from a united working class that knows no borders, indeed believes that all people have a human right to live and work wherever they choose.
“temporary protected status” the operative word is “temporary”.
and the fact that thousands upon thousands are applying for asylum here because Venezuela’s socialist government’s economy unsurprisingly sh*t the bed should be a stark warning to this local lot of U.S. would be socialists who want to replicate Cuba/Venezula here in the U.S.. where are you gonna go after you wreck this??
Not one word about strangling US “sanctions,” economic warfare, on Venezuela for not playing ball with Pax Americana that is driving out-migration, nor of USAID’s diversion of aid from Central America to support the loser of the presidential election, Guido.
www . france24 . com
/en/20190717-us-diverts-central-america-aid-boost-venezuelas-guaido
Yeah man, it deserves a paragraph, lol.
If Oscar is interested in Latin American punk on a political level, I’d recommend the Grayzone to him. Anya, Max, and Aaron have done exemplary work exposing US regime change efforts in Venezuela. This one (there are many) doesn’t go deep, but it’s popcorn worthy:
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/05/29/grayzone-national-endowment-democracy-vp-cia/
If he can’t sleep , he shouldn’t be driving . We need to protect Mexicans first , especially if you have been here over 10 years and have kids with citizenship .
“Every night, he worries about President Donald Trump’s determination to rid the country of newly arrived immigrants like him.” That is from the first paragraph of this article, amply illustrating the bias of ML, along with most media outlets: the absolute intellectual inability to recognize the difference between legal and illegal immigrants. As for the people profiled in this story, I doubt if they have much to worry about. The Trump administration has made it clear, repeatedly, that they will be concentrating on those illegal immigrants who have committed crimes since they arrived in the US, or have a criminal record or are wanted for crimes in other countries. As long as they don’t fall into those categories, or are living with those who do, they probably don’t have much to worry about. But it’s just as well to keep in mind that other countries take their borders seriously. We used to, and now we are going back to that practice. As others have said, if you don’t have borders, you don’t have a country.
He is here legally. One can say its unreasonable for Biden to have allowed “temporary protected status” for Venezuelans, but the article says he has it, so is here legally.
Now if Trump repeals that status, unless he is given asylum (which he clearly does not qualify for) or is allowed to stay while his case is heard, he might then become “illegal”.
Unfortunately the right is even more dishonest than the left about what is going on…(although their lies are frankly more popular than the lefts actions over the last few years).