The administration of President Donald Trump has moved to end legal protections for thousands of Afghans and Cameroonians legally living in the United States.
On Friday, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security confirmed the decision, which will affect approximately 14,600 Afghans and 7,900 Cameroonians.
Those individuals were able to live in the US under a designation called “temporary protected status” or TPS.
The US government typically offers TPS to individuals already in the US for whom it may be unsafe to return, at least in the short term, due to conflict, natural disaster or other circumstances.
But the Trump administration has attempted to sever TPS protections for multiple nationalities since taking office in January, as part of a broader crackdown on immigration, both legal and otherwise.
In a statement, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that conditions in Afghanistan and Cameroon no longer met the criteria for TPS.
But critics point out that fighting has raged in Cameroon between the government and separatists since 2017.
And in Afghanistan, the Taliban has been in control of the government since the withdrawal of US and Western forces in 2021. Its leadership has been accused of perpetrating widespread human rights abuses, including arresting members of the previous US-backed government and banning women from many aspects of public life.
Refugee groups quickly condemned the move. Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the president of the nonprofit Global Refuge, called the revocation of the TPS for Afghans “a morally indefensible betrayal”. She warned they could face persecution if returned to Afghanistan.
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