(Reuters) -The U.S. will terminate deportation protections for Syrian migrants, the Department of Homeland Security said on Friday, part of President Donald Trump’s broad effort to strip legal status from migrants.
The action will terminate temporary protected status for more than 6,000 Syrians who have had access to the legal status since 2012, according to a Federal Register notice posted Friday.
“Conditions in Syria no longer prevent their nationals from returning home. Syria has been a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades, and it is contrary to our national interest to allow Syrians to remain in our country,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
The statement said Syrian nationals currently living in the U.S. have 60 days to voluntarily depart the country and return home.
Any Syrian national admitted under temporary protected status who is still in the U.S. after that time could be subject to arrest and deportation, it said.
Trump, a Republican, has sought to end temporary legal status for hundreds of thousands of migrants in the U.S., including some who have lived and worked in the country legally for decades.
The administration has said deportation protections were overused in the past and that many migrants no longer merit protections. Democrats and advocates for the migrants have said that TPS enrollees could be forced to return to dangerous conditions and that U.S. employers depend on their labor.
(Reporting by Christian Martinez in Los Angeles and Maiya Keidan in Toronto; Editing by David Gregorio)
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