Legal Today, Deportable Tomorrow: Trump’s Crackdown Shrinks Immigrants’ Options to Stay

The original story by Ximena Bustillo and Sergio Martínez-Beltrán for NPR.

More than 1.6 million immigrants have lost their legal status in the first 11 months of the second Trump presidency — a number so big it tops the entire population of Philadelphia. And it isn’t just undocumented people getting swept up. These are migrants who came through legal pathways: parole programs, visas, asylum processing tools, and Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Now many of them are watching the floor drop out beneath their feet.

Immigration advocates say this is the largest effort in modern US history to strip deportation protections from people who were here legally — and they warn the true total may be even higher.

“These were legal pathways. People did the thing the government asked them to do, and this government went and preemptively revoked that status,” said Todd Schulte, president of the immigration advocacy group FWD.us, which has been tracking the rollbacks. “There’s nothing close to this.”

The Trump administration’s argument is blunt: legal status tied to temporary programs was never meant to last, and the government has the right to end it — even if people built entire lives around it.

A US Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesperson, Matthew Tragesser, framed the moves as protecting taxpayers:

“The American taxpayer will no longer bear the financial burden of unlawfully present aliens.”

The administration has also encouraged people whose permissions are revoked to leave the country voluntarily, sometimes with incentives and a short window to go.

And the White House isn’t pretending this is accidental fallout. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt has celebrated the crackdown as historic, saying the administration has restricted migration “both illegal and legal” more than any other in history — including by pausing and revoking visas. Her message: a US visa “is not a right… it is a privilege.”

The speed has been the point. Some protections were slashed almost immediately after Trump returned to office.

One of the biggest early moves: Trump signed an executive order hours after inauguration ending a Biden-era humanitarian parole program that had allowed 530,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter temporarily. The Supreme Court later cleared the way for the government to end humanitarian status for some migrants under that umbrella, pushing many closer to deportation risk.

Then came Temporary Protected Status, a program meant to shelter people from deportation when their home countries are unsafe because of war, disaster, or instability. Since January, DHS has ended TPS for 10 countries (with some terminations tangled in lawsuits). TPS is supposed to be temporary — but critics say the government typically has to show conditions improved, and they argue the administration hasn’t convincingly done that.

Schulte points to Trump’s own rhetoric and US actions toward countries like Haiti, Afghanistan, and Venezuela as evidence the administration doesn’t truly view them as stable — even while ending protections anyway.

Another major cut: CBP One, a mobile app that allowed migrants to schedule appointments to seek asylum. Between 2023 and January 2025, more than 936,000 people were allowed into the US through that process. When the program was scrapped, many migrants who were still waiting for the next step received government messages telling them to leave.

Some were arrested during routine check-ins — even at courthouses — a trend that has intensified fear among people who thought they were following the rules.

One Venezuelan barber, Grebi Suárez, entered through CBP One just before Trump was inaugurated. He finally got his work permit and Social Security number — and still feels like the ground is unstable.

“I’m anxious and scared because some of my friends have received emails from the government telling them to self-deport,” he said.

It’s not just humanitarian programs. The State Department has revoked about 85,000 visas this year across categories, including more than 8,000 student visas — more than double last year’s total. Officials say DUIs, assaults and theft account for a large share of cancellations, and they describe it as a public safety move.

But in practice, mass revocations ripple beyond the people accused of crimes. They create uncertainty for students, families and workers who worry they could be next — especially as “foreign national interests” becomes a wide umbrella for denial or removal.

In another headline move, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the administration would pause the diversity visa lottery, blaming it — politically — on the fact that a suspect in a deadly shooting came to the US through the program in 2017 and later got a green card.

The pause doesn’t affect people already here via the lottery, but it signals something larger: the administration isn’t only tightening borders — it’s narrowing the legal front door.

The rollback hits family-based channels too. The administration moved to cancel Family Reunification Parole affecting about 14,000 people, many from Central and South America, who were allowed to wait in the US while paperwork moved through the family visa backlog.

For many families, these programs were supposed to reduce chaos — making migration more orderly, documented, and trackable. Now the message feels reversed: even if you follow the process, you might still lose your place.

For some migrants, courts have slowed or partially blocked certain terminations, including parts of Venezuela’s TPS and a TPS cancellation affecting Syrians. But that’s a thin shield. Lawsuits can take months or years, and people living under temporary holds still often face work permit gaps, housing instability, and fear of enforcement.

Looking ahead, more programs are at risk as permissions expire in 2026 for places like El Salvador, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Advocates warn the US could end up with no one protected under TPS for the first time since the program began in 1990 — if renewals stop.

Ukrainians are watching nervously too. The Uniting for Ukraine parole program was paused earlier this year, then resumed — but the uncertainty rattled families. One Ukrainian, Viktoriia Panova, saw her work permit expire during the pause.

“We cannot create any plans for our lives because of this situation,” she said.

The story Trump officials want to tell is simple: temporary means temporary, and people should leave when the program ends.

The story migrants are living is messier: jobs, leases, school years, medical treatments, marriages — all built on the assumption that if you play by the rules, the rules won’t suddenly change.

Meanwhile, DHS says the administration has deported over 600,000 people without legal status this year. But the bigger shift might be the one happening in parallel: turning huge numbers of previously legal residents into people who now wake up wondering whether they’re next.