Venezuelan family in US under curtailed humanitarian protections clings to faith amid uncertainty
Every Sunday, Johann Teran goes to worship at a Lutheran service in suburban Minneapolis, trying to find some hope that the future he was building isn't all slipping away.
Like hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans hit by political and economic crises, Teran, his wife and her mother applied for different kinds of humanitarian protections in the United States that the Trump administration has curtailed or is expected to end soon.
'I'm feeling like they're telling me, 'Go, just go back, we don't want you.' Even when they gave me the opportunity to be here,' Teran said. 'We are just hopeless, and trying to find hope, and that's why I'm going more to the church, to look for or get this hope that I need.'
The 27-year-old attorney came to Minnesota eight months ago on a humanitarian parole program the Biden administration created in 2022. It granted two-year visas to 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela – all countries deemed by the United States to have unstable or repressive governments – if they had a U.S. financial sponsor and passed background checks.
Teran's wife, Karelia, 29, hadn't received approval yet when the new administration ended the program, leaving her in Venezuela without a legal path to the U.S. Her mother, Marlenia Padron, was granted temporary protected status – TPS, another mechanism for people who fled countries in disarray – in 2023, but the government has ordered it to end in early April for several hundred thousand Venezuelans like her. Hundreds of thousands more Venezuelans and Haitians will lose TPS later this year. Lawsuits were filed Thursday to reverse the decision about Venezuelans.
Before cooking dinner in her small apartment decorated with photos of far-away relatives and statuettes of the Virgin Mary, Padron said she understands that President Donald Trump 'was fed up' with Venezuelans who have committed crimes in the United States and wants to deport them.
'But he eliminates the TPS and there we all fall,' Padron said in Spanish. 'I don't know what's going to happen, what will happen with a lot of people who are here hurting nobody. ... I'm working, I file my taxes. I wanted to buy a house. Those are the plans we had, but now I can't have those plans.'
Padron, 53, said threats against her began just as Venezuela's economic crisis escalated. Working as an attorney for a local government office in Puerto La Cruz, she said she was kidnapped for ransom, detained on trumped-up political accusations and surveilled – all the while watching her income disappear in the currency crisis, water and electricity rationed, and medicine for her elderly mother grow scarce.
'That time of the kidnapping was the trigger,' she said, describing how she was taken from a shopping center and held for three days, with beatings and accusations of being a 'traitor of the homeland' for raising questions about corruption.
'Nobody can say Venezuela is a place that has stability and respect for human rights. So people are going to continue to flee,' said Karen Musalo, an attorney and professor who leads the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at University of California College of Law, San Francisco. 'The U.S., I would say under the Biden administration, with both humanitarian parole and temporary protected status, was recognizing that and responding to that.'
Musalo said most of roughly 8 million Venezuelans who fled in recent years went to other Latin American countries, triggering a regional crisis.
Padron went to Colombia first, crossing by canoe a river where gangs and guerrillas roamed. Worried she still might be targeted, she decided to travel on to Mexico, cross into the United States and turn herself into U.S. immigration authorities, asking for asylum – a process that can take many years.
When the special TPS program started, she applied, got a work permit and a job at a printing press, and finally felt safe in her new home in Minnesota – not always looking over her shoulders for threats or navigating shortages of necessities.
'I get home, make my meal for the next day, if I want to eat out, I go out – because there's quality of life, I earn what one earns to live peacefully,' she said. 'I don't have to go to a gas station to get gas and spend two days in line.'
Padron had never seen trees without leaves when she arrived in fall 2021, so adjusting to the frigid winters has been jarring. But she finds peacefulness in the snow.
'Sometimes when there's a lot of snow, I leave the shoes outside, and then I open the door and I think, 'My shoes, I left them outside!' And there they are. In Venezuela that wouldn't happen, they'd steal your shoes,' Padron said.
Now her daughter has no way to rejoin the family, and Padron is unsure of her own next steps. Even her father back in Venezuela has been asking 'When will they deport you?' But she says she can't go back in fear of her life.
Raised Catholic, she hopes that if she can stay in the United States, she will get a bigger home with an altar covered in flowers for the two statuettes – one honors her native city's Virgin Del Valle and the other an icon especially venerated by Cubans, La Virgen de la Caridad.
Meanwhile, she started attending Tapestry Church, a Lutheran congregation where old-timers as well as Latin American migrants worship in Spanish and English.
In 2023, the church had applied to sponsor humanitarian parole for 38 Venezuelans, but those cases were never processed. Now, it tries to reassure its congregants despite widespread fears.
'We have the conviction that we're stronger in community,' said the Rev. Melissa Melnick Gonzalez, Tapestry's pastor.
Teran, who works as a paralegal, has been volunteering with the congregation, helping fellow immigrants with paperwork.
'Everybody is worried and kind of anxious. People doesn't want to go out anymore,' he said. 'The Venezuelan community is just at home. We're all waiting, like we were criminals.'
He's trying to get a work visa that would prevent him from returning to Venezuela while allowing his wife, an orthodontist, to leave a country where young professionals like them can't make ends meet – and any protest risks violent repression.
He said he studied democracy in law school and would like to practice law in the United States, where 'there's no impunity.'
'So that dream is also being kind of canceled by Trump,' Teran said.
On a recent evening, as Padron fried arepas, Teran video-called his wife, and reached out to the phone screen when she turned it on their two snoozing Schnauzer dogs, Hoddy and Honey. Expecting Karelia's humanitarian parole would be approved any time, he had moved into a pet-friendly apartment before the program was terminated.
'I don't see any future right now for having her, in fact there's nothing that I can do right now for having her,' Teran said. 'I don't understand that, why you allow me to get in legally and now you're treating me like an illegal.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Axios
a day ago
- Axios
LA Dodgers to donate $1M to help immigrants hit by ICE raids
The Los Angeles Dodgers announced it will donate $1 million to assist immigrant families recently affected by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in the Los Angeles area. Why it matters: The announcement came after the reigning World Series champions had come under criticism earlier this month for failing to speak out against the ICE raids and for unsuccessfully pressuring a singer not to perform a Spanish version of the national anthem at a Dodgers game. It also came on the heels of a petition signed by a group of activists, faith and labor leaders, urging the team to speak out more. Zoom in: The Dodgers said the team will commit $1 million toward assistance for families of immigrants affected by the recent events in the city. The team also announced plans for further initiatives, which are set to be unveiled in the coming days. It was the first public response to the immigration raids that have struck Los Angeles over the last two weeks. What they're saying: "What's happening in Los Angeles has reverberated among thousands upon thousands of people, and we have heard the calls for us to take a leading role on behalf of those affected," Stan Kasten, Dodgers president & CEO, said in a statement. "We believe that by committing resources and taking action, we will continue to support and uplift the communities of Greater Los Angeles. LA Mayor Karen Bass thanked the Dodgers in the same team statement. "These last weeks have sent shockwaves of fear rippling through every neighborhood and have had a direct impact on our economy. My message to all Angelenos is clear: We will stick together during this time and we will not turn our backs on one another," she said. Context: Protests broke out earlier this month near a Home Depot in the LA County city of Paramount, after ICE agents carried out a deportation operation targeting day laborers. The Trump administration then ordered National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines to quell protests over the objections of local and state officials. The event generated solidarity protests by Latinos in other cities, from Houston to Atlanta. State of play: Latino fans — especially Mexican Americans — comprise a large percentage of the Dodgers' fan base, a trend that has been ongoing since the late 1980s, when Mexican-born left-handed pitcher Fernando Valenzuela played for the team. The initial lack of response from the Dodgers has angered many Latino fans who have protested outside the stadium and posted social media photos of ICE and Border Patrol agents near the Dodgers' grounds. Other LA-area professional teams, including LAFC and Angel City FC, issued statements about "fear and uncertainty" being felt throughout the city. The intrigue: The Dodgers said on Thursday that they refused to grant ICE access around the stadium before their game with the San Diego Padres, another team with a large Mexican American fan base. "This morning, ICE agents came to Dodger Stadium and requested permission to access the parking lots. They were denied entry to the grounds by the organization. Tonight's game will be played as scheduled," the Dodgers posted on X. Yes, but: ICE denied on X that agents were at Dodger Stadium. "False. We were never there," ICE posted. posted on X.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
New York mayoral candidate arrested by Ice: ‘Trump is looking to stoke conflict, weaponize fear'
As the New York city comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was hauled away by masked Ice agents on Tuesday, all he could think about was whether there was anything more he could do for the man he was trying to help, an immigrant New Yorker named Edgardo. Both men ended up detained, but unlike Edgardo's, Lander's ordeal was over after a few hours. By the time the New York governor, Katy Hochul, marched him out of the courthouse – after proclaiming, of his arrest: 'This is bullshit' – videos and photos of the officers manhandling him had gone viral. The arrest of yet another elected official prompted widespread condemnation of another sign of the US's steady slide into authoritarianism. A host of New York politicians, along with a swelling crowd of angry New Yorkers, awaited Lander outside the courthouse in downtown Manhattan. (Andrew Cuomo, the former governor and mayoral race frontrunner, was a notable absence, though he did condemn the arrest.) 'I wasn't surprised there were a lot of folks outside angry both about the violations of the rights of immigrants and about Trump's efforts to undermine democracy,' Lander told the Guardian in an interview. 'The Trump administration has been very clear that they are looking to stoke conflict, weaponize fear, and undermine democracy, and here they are doing it,' he added. Lander was 'just fine', he told the crowd. He had lost a button in the commotion. But he would sleep in his bed and while no charges against him were filed, he would have had access to a lawyer if they had been. 'But Edgardo will sleep in an Ice detention facility God knows where tonight,' he said. 'He has been stripped of his due process rights in a country that is supposed to be founded on equal justice under law.' A day after the ordeal, Lander said he had no updates on Edgardo, a Spanish-speaking immigrant whom Lander had met just before they were both detained. Lander had been accompanying Edgardo as part of an organized effort to shield immigrants from agents who have been increasingly stalking them for arrest when they appear for their regularly scheduled court hearings. On Tuesday, the group watching proceedings at the court included four rabbis, in addition to Lander, his wife Meg Barnette, and other advocates. He's been showing up, he says, because people in the immigration court system are otherwise unprotected. 'This is one of the rights violations of this system,' he said. 'All these people in it with no lawyers and really no one, no advocates, no one looking out for them.' With early voting well under way and election day less than a week away, the New York City mayoral race is heating up – and Wednesday's arrest has significantly raised the visibility of Lander, a well-respected, longtime New York politician who has nonetheless struggled to gain recognition in what is largely a race between Cuomo and the leftist Zohran Mamdani. (Mamdani rushed to the courthouse on Wednesday as soon as news of Lander's arrest broke.) Lander, who like Mamdani is pitching a progressive vision for a more affordable city, is also running on his years-long experience with city government and his bridge-building skills. Lander is the third Democratic politician recently detained by Department of Homeland Security officials in connection with Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. In this distinction, he joins the California senator Alex Padilla, recently handcuffed and forcibly removed from a DHS press conference, and Newark's mayor, Ras Baraka, who was arrested while protesting outside an immigration detention center in New Jersey last month. Lander sees in the targeting of outspoken Democratic politicians the fulfillment of the Trump administration's promise to 'liberate' cities such as Los Angeles and New York. He said it was 'strange' to find himself a casualty of the administration's crackdown. 'But unfortunately not that strange, as Trump has named New York City on the list of places where they are planning to both ratchet up immigration enforcement and put pressure on elected officials.' In recent weeks Ice agents have been ordered to ramp up arrests, even without warrants. In a video of Lander's arrest, he is heard asking Ice agents multiple times for a warrant – which they do not produce – before telling them, as they place him in handcuffs, that they 'don't have the authority to arrest US citizens asking for a judicial warrant'. The Ice agents who arrested him knew he was an elected official, Lander said. He tried to learn more about them while he was detained. 'I asked a few questions just to understand who they were,' he said. They were also immigrants – one a Pakistani Muslim resident of Brooklyn, the other an Indo-Guyanese man from Queens. 'I asked about their shifts. I hear that Ice agents are working a lot of hours right now,' he said. 'Brad's arrest was shocking – not in the violence, not in the lawlessness, because we've seen this directed at immigrants and citizens profiled as immigrants – but in the decision from Ice to inflict that violence on a sitting elected citywide official,' said Sophie Ellman-Golan, an organizer with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, of which Lander has been a member for decades. Along with JFREJ, he has been working with Immigrant Act, another advocacy group, in shifts to accompany immigrants to court hearings. Lander has gained some momentum after challenging Cuomo during a recent mayoral debate and cross-endorsing fellow progressive Mamdani. But he consistently polled in third place in the race, well behind the other two. Lander called out the current mayor – Eric Adams, who offered little sympathy – of having 'sold out our city' through corruption. He said Cuomo 'made no effort whatsoever to reach out to most New Yorkers' and that he and Mamdani cross-endorsed one another 'because we fundamentally agree that Andrew Cuomo is utterly unfit to be mayor of this city'. He cited Cuomo's hesitation when he was asked in a recent debate whether he had visited a mosque. 'He has nothing to say to Muslim New Yorkers,' said Lander. 'He is an abusive bully who doesn't even love New York City and is just in it for himself.' While some of his supporters criticised him over the Mamdani endorsement – largely due to Mamdani's openly pro-Palestinian views – Lander said that there was 'an enormous outpouring of goodwill for it'. 'It really did prompt a sense of, 'Oh, politics could be not just about individuals looking out for themselves, but trying to build something broader that would build a more aspirational vision for the city, and help people come together around it. 'Obviously, I am putting my case out for why I will be the best mayor of New York City,' he said, citing recent endorsements as a sign his campaign is surging. But, he added, he also hoped to promote a politics 'that's trying to bring people together across divides, and in this case, having one Jewish New Yorker and one Muslim New Yorker cross-endorse in that way offers a hopeful project'. 'Whoever wins, I intend to continue to pursue that hopeful politics.'
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Thousands of Afghans face expulsion from US as Trump removes protections
Thousands of Afghans who fled to the US as the Taliban grabbed power again in Afghanistan are in mortal dread of being deported back to danger in the coming weeks amid the Trump administration's anti-immigration crackdown. Many, including some who assisted US forces in Afghanistan before the botched withdrawal by the military in 2021, are contending with threats to their legal status in the US on several fronts. Donald Trump revoked safeguards from deportation for those in the US covered under temporary protected status (TPS), by taking Afghanistan off the list of eligible countries then, not long after, put Afghanistan on the list of countries affected by the revamped travel ban. Afghans are also affected by Trump's refugee ban and that all comes amid almost daily news of stepped-up arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) affecting undocumented immigrants and also many with a legal status, from Central and South America, parts of Africa and Asia and other regions, caught in the dragnet and sending terror rippling through other communities. Shir Agha Safi, the executive director of Afghan Partners in Des Moines, a non-profit in Iowa where there are 500 families who evacuated from Afghanistan to escape the re-empowered Taliban, said members of his community are 'traumatized because they have seen what happened to Venezuelan immigrants in other states'. The loss of TPS for Afghans, which also provides employment authorization, goes into effect on 14 July. With the government's announcement, Safi said some in his community are too afraid to speak openly but had told him 'they would choose suicide over being tortured and killed by the Taliban'. Asked to elaborate, he said: 'They have said this because the Taliban is still there and if you send an Afghan back to Afghanistan that would mean a death penalty.' The US government initially granted Afghans in the US TPS in 2022, because the Biden administration agreed that it was too risky for them to return to Afghanistan due to the armed conflict and political turmoil that has forced millions to flee the country. Even before Trump returned to the White House their foothold in US society was uncertain. Now the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) argues that Afghanistan is safe to go back to. 'Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent them from returning to their home country,' homeland security secretary Kristi Noem said in a recent statement. The department cited rising tourism as a factor, with the Federal Register's item about revoking TPS for Afghans saying 'tourism to Afghanistan has increased, as the rates of kidnappings have reduced'. It quotes that from a US Institute of Peace report that assessed conditions three years after the Taliban took back control and does include that sentence – but the majority of the report describes negative conditions in poverty-stricken Afghanistan, where 'the rule of law has been replaced by the rule of force, where justice is not administered in courts but meted out through fear and violence'. The US state department website, meanwhile, puts the country in the highest-risk advice category for US citizens, warning: 'Do not travel to Afghanistan due to civil unrest, crime, terrorism, risk of wrongful detention, kidnapping, and limited health facilities.' But immigration advocates and Democratic lawmakers say Taliban-controlled Afghanistan remains a dangerous country for many, especially minorities, women and those who assisted the foreign war effort, including humanitarian work. Some foreigners living in Afghanistan have been arrested by the Taliban this year and detained for weeks. Related: Fleeing Taliban fighters, Ibrahim begs the country he helped – Australia – to save his family California state senator Aisha Wahab, the first Afghan American woman elected to US public office, challenged the Trump administration's decision. 'Pushing these individuals to Afghanistan again – Afghanistan being a country that lacks basic human rights, basic women's rights, basic humanitarian support, a legal and justice system – is problematic,' said Wahab, who represents some of the largest Afghan immigrant communities in northern California. 'Afghanistan is a country that is landlocked, that struggles with trade, that more than 50% of their population are not allowed to get an education beyond sixth grade. It's a fact that it is led by a deeply religious regime that has a lot of problems,' she added. Hundreds of Afghans have been publicly flogged by the authorities since the Taliban took over in 2021, the Guardian reported last month. In a bipartisan approach, US Senators Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, and Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, have written jointly to secretary of state Marco Rubio. 'We are writing to express profound concern over the recent decision to terminate temporary protected status (TPS) for over 8,000 Afghan nationals currently residing in the United States. This decision endangers thousands of lives, including Afghans who stood by the United States. This decision represents a historic betrayal of promises made and undermines the values we fought for far more than 20 years in Afghanistan,' the letter reads. It added that revoking TPS, especially for women and minority groups, 'exposes these individuals to the very real threat of persecution, violence and even death under Taliban rule'. While the US government hasn't laid out a deportation plan, it has encouraged Afghans who lose their TPS status to leave the country. However, a DHS official said: 'Any Afghan who fears persecution is able to request asylum. All aliens who have had their TPS or parole terminated or are otherwise in the country unlawfully should take advantage of the CBP Home self-deportation process to receive a free one-way plane ticket and $1,000 financial assistance to help them resettle elsewhere.' Bipartisan efforts to give Afghans permanent legal status in the US previously stalled for three years, with the Biden administration creating temporary avenues for those in limbo. Many Afghan families in the US still depend on the future of TPS, said Jill Marie Bussey, the director for legal affairs at Global Refuge, an immigrant rights group that has helped thousands of Afghans settle in the US. 'Protection from deportation is the center, but the work authorization associated with the status is the only thing that is allowing them to send money to their loved ones right now and keeping them safe,' said Bussey. 'I have a client, whom I message with almost on a daily basis, who is absolutely distraught, at a very high level of anxiety, because he fears that his spouse and children, including his four-year-old daughter, whom he's never met in person, will suffer greatly if he loses his work authorization.' According to government data, since July of 2021, US Citizenship and Immigration Services has received nearly 22,000 asylum applications by Afghan nationals. Nearly 20,000 of them were granted. But given the immigration court backlog, which totals 3.5 million active cases and an average wait time between five to 636 days, many Afghans still haven't heard any news on their applications on other status available to them, Bussey added. In a similar scenario are those who worked for the US government in Afghanistan and arrived on American soil. Many are still waiting for an approval from the US Department of State that would validate their eligibility for a special immigration visa (SIV), Bussey added. 'Some were hesitant to apply for asylum because they were eligible for SIV and were waiting for their approval in order to apply for their green card,' she said. But things are badly held up in the backlog. 'They were promised that green card based on their allyship to our country and then applying for asylum felt like a betrayal, an imperfect fit for them,' said Bussey. The Guardian requested information on how many Afghans currently protected by TPS have also been granted other legal status, but DHS did not respond.
