Virginia Guevara came to the United States from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in the 1990s, before the country was granted Temporary Protected Status following the devastating destruction caused by Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

Guevara, 48 at the time, found a new and better life in the U.S. by working as a kitchen helper. Now, at 78, she faces possible deportation back to Honduras, a country she hasn’t been to in decades, after the Trump administration ended deportation protections for over 51,000 Hondurans on Monday.

Her family is now concerned about what will happen in September when TPS for Honduras officially expires. Her grandson, Isaac Dubon, is worried about what would happen to her if she’s detained in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, after news reports of multiple deaths, including five alone in Florida.

“She is an elderly woman with high blood pressure and diabetes,” Dubon said of his grandmother, who lives in Oakland Park in Broward County.

Maria Elena Hernandez, a 67-year-old Nicaraguan immigrant, has been living and working in the U.S. for nearly 30 years with TPS. She worked as a cleaner at a university for 18 years, and two years ago, she began receiving Social Security benefits.

On Monday, Hernandez, who lives in Broward, became part of a group of 2,900 Nicaraguans who learned that the Trump administration is ending their TPS, the measure that grants deportation protection and work permits to immigrants in the U.S. from countries in turmoil. In September, she could face deportation to a country she has not been to in decades, unable to manage her two chronic diseases and separated from her family, who are U.S. citizens.

The terminations of TPS for Honduras and Nicaragua announced on Monday are set to take effect on Sept. 8.

TPS for Honduras and Nicaragua was first granted in January 1999 in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch. In the years since, multiple U.S. attorneys general and Homeland Security secretaries have extended those protections due to ongoing recovery challenges, subsequent natural disasters, and worsening economic and political crises.

Hernandez is among a dozen Honduran, Nicaraguan and Nepali TPS holders who filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration on Monday regarding its decision to end the protections for their nationalities. The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco, argues that the administration is determined to dismantle TPS entirely regardless of current real-life conditions in those countries or any legal considerations.

The nation of Nepal, also named in the lawsuit, was first designated for TPS in June 2015 following a catastrophic 7.8 magnitude earthquake and a series of severe aftershocks that killed nearly 9,000 people and displaced millions. In June, the Trump administration announced the termination of Nepal’s TPS designation, with protections set to end on Aug. 5. Altogether, the TPS terminations for Honduras, Nicaragua, and Nepal will strip legal status and protections from approximately 61,000 people—51,000 from Honduras, 7,200 from Nepal, and 2,900 from Nicaragua.

“The termination of TPS is very terrifying for me. It has affected me emotionally and financially, as we would lose our jobs and our health insurance,” Hernandez said. She said that since receiving TPS, she has paid taxes and contributed both economically and culturally to the United States.

“I have lived here for over 25 years,” she added. “Now they want me to return to Nicaragua, where there are so many problems, to the point that this government recommended its citizens not to visit it.”

Florida is home to more than 40% of Nicaraguans living in the United States, including many like Hernandez, though not all are TPS holders. Many reside in the Miami area, particularly in the city of Sweetwater, often referred to as “Little Managua” for its high number of Nicaraguan residents.

This is the second time Honduran and Nicaraguan TPS holders experience uncertainty a about their fate as the Trump administration takes steps to end their protections for a second time. A similar attempt was made in 2017 during Trump’s first term, targeting those countries as well as Sudan, Haiti and El Salvador. That effort was successfully challenged in federal court. Now, eight years later, these communities are being forced to fight the same battle all over again. El Salvador’s TPS is the only deportation protection the Trump administration has not terminated, allowing the extension granted under the Biden administration to stand. A close ally in Trump-era immigration crackdowns—including the controversial deportation of Venezuelans to its mega-prison, CECOT—El Salvador remains an exception, as TPS for Venezuela, Haiti, Cameroon and Afghanistan has been ended.

Harold Rocha, president of the Nicaraguan American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said his group had anticipated the decision by the Trump administration. The organization had been part of a coalition advocating for the Biden administration to grant a new TPS designation for Nicaraguans who had recently arrived as well as those in the U.S. since 1999.

“We actively tried to get the previous administration to grant the new designation because we feared what we are seeing now was going to pass,” he said.

Rocha said the group had been close to achieving a new TPS designation, but the Biden administration instead began a new humanitarian parole program to help reduce the number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. At the time, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told his group the new designation was being put on hold so the administration could determine if the new program was being effective.

The humanitarian parole program, known as CHNV for the Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who benefited from it, allowed more than 500,000 people legally came to the United States. But it was abruptly terminated mid-stream by the Trump administration.

Rocha said his organization is pivoting to educate and provide information on what to do now for Nicaraguans who may now face deportation after decades of living in the United States.

“Many of them have been active members of the communities where they lived and work. They are full members of those communities. Many of them are spouses or parents to US citizens. How do they leave that behind?” Rocha said.

Contradictions

The Trump administration, in its decisions to terminate TPS for multiple countries, has consistently labeled those nations as sufficiently safe for their nationals living in the U.S. to return to.

But that has contradicted the administration’s own advisories regarding U.S. citizens visiting those countries. Nicaragua and Honduras are both listed by the State Department at Travel Advisory Level 3 — “Reconsider Travel” — citing high crime rates, risks of wrongful detention and lack of fair trials. U.S. citizens face a blanket prohibition from traveling to one department in Honduras, Gracias a Dios, because of high levels of criminal activity from drug trafficking, according to the State Department advisory.

The lawsuit filed in San Francisco by the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, and the Haitian Bridge Alliance highlights what the groups say is a pattern repeated from the previous round of TPS terminations.

The suit says DHS Secretary Kristi Noem cited certain positive developments—such as increased tourism and real estate investment—as reasons for ending protections, while ignoring key country conditions that had previously justified TPS, including “political violence” and “staggering levels of crime.”

The 60-day timeline provided for the termination of TPS for Hondurans and Nicaraguans is unlawful, the lawsuit argues, because it leaves long-time TPS holders—many of whom have lived and worked legally in the United States for decades—with virtually no time to prepare for losing their legal status and employment authorization.

“The decisions to strip legal status from people who have lived in the U.S. for at least 10 years, and in most cases at least 25, and followed all the rules, are not just callous. It’s also illegal,” said Jessica Bansal, attorney at the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. “The administration cannot manufacture a predetermined outcome without regard for its statutory obligations.”

According to the attorneys, no TPS termination in the past 20 years, including those under the first Trump administration, has provided such limited notice to individuals with long-standing protections.

Maureen Porras, the vice mayor of Doral who immigrated to the United States from Nicaragua in 1996, said she found the Trump administration decision “disheartening.” She cited the 2018 protests against Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s government that led to widespread crackdowns on citizens as signs of concern for people returning to the country.

“I don’t think the socio-economic and socio-political conditions are favorable for or safe enough for these folks to return,” she said.

Republican U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Miami said in a posting Monday on X that he is “profoundly concerned for those who cannot safely return to Nicaragua due to the dangers they are likely to face.” He called on the Trump administration to reconsider its TPS decision the Central American nation.

“For years, the Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo regime has deprived the Nicaraguan people of their fundamental freedoms, forcing thousands into exile in numerous countries, including the United States,” his comment on X said.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said on X on Monday that the decision to end TPS for both countries is “a heartbreaking setback” for hundreds of thousands of immigrants across the country, including many in Miami-Dade.

“For decades, TPS holders from Honduras and Nicaragua have lived and worked here under lawful protection, helping to strengthen our economy and enrich our society,” she said. “Forcing them to return to nations still struggling with widespread insecurity and instability is both inhumane and counterproductive.”

Miami-Dade County Commissioner Marleine Bastien called on Congress to pass legislation to grant permanency to families with TPS.

“Once again, this abrupt and shortsighted reversal puts families at risk of separation and creates unnecessary fear and instability in cities like ours, where TPS recipients are vital members of the workforce and economy,” Bastien said in a statement.

Bastien’s concerns are deeply personal for longtime Honduran and Nicaraguan TPS holders living in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, whose families now face the threat of separation and loss of stability.

Guevara’s grandson, Dubon, said his family fears she will lose all the retirement benefits she earned.

“All she ever did was work,” he said. “It’s just unfair.”

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