WASHINGTON, Jan 30, (AP): US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Wednesday that the Trump administration has revoked a decision that would have protected roughly 600,000 people from Venezuela from deportation, putting some at risk of being removed from the country in about two months. Noem signed a notice reversing a move by her predecessor, Alejandro Mayorkas, in the waning days of the Biden administration to extend Temporary Protected Status.

The change is effective immediately and comes amid a slew of actions as the Trump administration works to make good on promises to crack down on illegal immigration and carry out the largest mass deportation effort in US history. "Before he left town, Mayorkas signed an order that said for 18 months they were going to extend this protection to people that are on Temporary Protected Status, which meant that they were going to be able to stay here and violate our laws for another 18 months," Noem told "Fox and Friends.” "We stopped that,” Noem said.

Experts and advocates said the immediate impact among those affected would be uncertainty and fear. "I’m scared even though I’m here legally and I arrived legally," said Caren Añez, a 41-year-old single mother who requested TPS in 2023 and received it in 2024, after arriving in the US on a tourist visa. "I am distraught, seeing how else I can stay here legally.”

Añez said she left Venezuela because she feared being arrested for working as an independent news reporter for a Venezuelan site. She now works as office manager in Texas and said returning home is not an option. "I cannot enter Venezuela because my life is in danger,” she said. More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have left their home country since 2013, when its economy unraveled and President Nicolas Maduro took office.

Most settled in Latin America and the Caribbean, but after the pandemic, migrants increasingly set their sights on the US. Venezuelans’ desire for better living conditions and their rejection of Maduro and his policies are expected to keep pushing people to emigrate.  Ahead of the presidential election last year, a nationwide poll by Venezuela-based research firm Delphos showed about a quarter of the population thinking about emigrating if Maduro was re-elected.