For the past week, Amanda, a 35-year-old Ohio-born woman, has been anxiously scouring the internet for information about Temporary Protected Status, the federal program that shields over half a million Venezuelans from deportation.

She is 25 weeks pregnant with her first child. Her boyfriend, the father of her baby, is an immigrant from Venezuela with TPS who has been in the United States for almost two years. Amanda, who works at a nonprofit that provides services for early childhood programs, says the Trump administration’s recent roll-back of an 18-month extension of the deportation protections has plunged her and her boyfriend into uncertainty.

“I feel like I can no longer worry about the birth of my child that can come any week. I now have to figure out, how do I pay for a lawyer if I need one? Do we elope quickly?” said Amanda, who asked that her last name not be sued out of fear for her boyfriend’s safety.

Amanda’s plight underscores how the tsunami of immigration orders stemming from the White House is affecting not just Venezuelans themselves but countless U.S. citizens and green-card holders in Florida and across the country. They fear that their loved ones will be sent back to Venezuela, which is rife with humanitarian and political crises. The roll-back in TPS protections has caused anxiety in Florida’s immigrant communities, the state with the largest population of TPS holders in the country and where nearly 60% of beneficiaries are Venezuelan.

Amanda and her boyfriend, who live in the Midwest, fear being separated if Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem does not renew the protections for Venezuela soon. Her boyfriend recently found a stable factory job, but fears he may soon be unable to work legally in the United States and support their newborn.

“I’m where I’m gonna go into early labor because of how much stress I have right now with immigration,” said Amanda, adding that her significant other feels unwanted in this country. “He feels people hate Venezuelans.”

More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have fled their country over the last decade, escaping an ongoing humanitarian crisis. According to the US. Census, 903,153 Venezuelans live in the U.S. Among them, 505,400 are under TPS deportation protection, and potentially might be forced to leave if the protection is ultimately revoked.

Despite dating a Venezuelan man who faces uncertainty over his legal future in the U.S., Amanda remains a strong supporter of Trump’s immigration policies. She believes the economy was bad for most Americans under Biden, and voted for President Trump. That’s a decision she is not yet ready to regret. For now, she is simply waiting for more information so she and her new family can make an informed call.

‘We stopped that’

Before Biden left the White House, former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas extended Venezuela’s TPS from April 2025 through October 2026.

This week, Noem announced that she would withdraw the extension, arguing that Mayorkas had improperly extended the program when it was a decision that should have been left to Trump.

“Before he left town, Mayorkas signed an order that said for 18 months, they were going to extend protection to people on Temporary Protected Status, which meant they were going to be able to stay here and violate our laws for another 18 months,” Noem said. “We stopped that.”

The Biden administration first designated Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans in March 2021, citing the deteriorating living conditions and repressive government under leader Nicolás Maduro in the South American country. He later expanded the program in October 2023 to include hundreds of thousands of more Venezuelans who had arrived at a later date. The designations have been widely celebrated in South Florida, the heart of the Venezuelan community in the United States.

Now, the protections are set to expire in April for 256,625 Venezuelans unless Noem extends the designation by Saturday. In September, TPS is slated to run out for another 248,775 people unless she renews them.

For many Venezuelans like Enrique, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in Broward County, the characterization of TPS recipients as criminals strikes him as discriminatory. Being convicted of a felony or having two-plus misdemeanors bars someone from being eligible for deportation protections. Enrique’s family entered the country legally and has not been involved in any criminal activities.

“It’s deeply unfair,” Enrique says, expressing frustration over the political targeting of Venezuelan immigrants. “It’s deeply unfair that the government is criminalizing Venezuelans and targeting us for political reasons. It’s simply not right.”

He said that every single member of his family is affected by this decision. Enrique’s extended family arrived through a Biden-era parole process that allowed about 531,000 Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Haitians, and Cubans to live and work in the United States for two years as long as they flew into an airport and passed health and background checks. So did his brother, sister-in-law, and nephew. The Biden administration announced in October that current beneficiaries would no longer be allowed to renew their parole, while Trump ended the program altogether.

Enrique’s family hoped that being TPS recipients would give them some stability while they found a pathway toward a permanent status in the U.S.

The TPS rollback has ignited looming anxieties over their future here, and the computer engineer is left grappling with the fear that their hard-won stability could be ripped away, forcing his family back into the perils they fled in their home country.

“We’ve always been careful to follow the law in this country,” Enrique said. “If TPS is revoked, my family will have no choice but to return to Venezuela. They’re in their fifties, and it would mean starting over from scratch. My brother and I were born in Colombia and moved to Venezuela as children—this would be our second migration.”

‘I’m afraid she might be deported’

A. Gomez, a U.S. citizen born in New York City, is deeply concerned about his fiancée, the mother of their four-month-old child. She arrived from Venezuela two years ago. Today, she’s a TPS beneficiary. The couple met over a year ago through a dating app. They quickly became life partners, and now share a daughter.

“I didn’t fully understand the situation with TPS at first, but when our daughter was born and Trump was elected, we decided to get a marriage license,” said Gomez, who is in his 40s.

His 30-year-old fiancée was an activist who opposed the Maduro government in Venezuela. She fled the country due to political pressures, he said. Gomez, fearing for their future, decided to marry her after Trump’s election, concerned about the uncertainty surrounding her status.

“I’m afraid she might be deported,” he said. “If she’s sent back to Venezuela, the attention on her there would put her in danger.”

The Biden administration announced that direct deportations would resume to Venezuela in October 2023. However, there have been no deportation flights there in a year. Independent analysts note the pause came after tensions between the South American country and the U.S. escalated. It remains to be seen whether the Trump administration will be able to resume them.

Venezuelan community leaders and immigration activists sharply criticize deportations to Venezuela, arguing that migrants, especially political dissenters, could face extreme danger and violence once returned.

'Everybody is just really nervous'

The rollback of TPS is also affecting business owners in Florida, who are concerned about what will happen to their employees and their day-to-day operations if Venezuelan TPS recipients are soon no longer allowed to work in the United States.

At a local Venezuelan cafe with three locations in South Florida, one of the owners woke up on Wednesday to an unhappy surprise when he saw the news of TPS extensions being revoked.

“This was like a bucket of cold water that nobody was expecting,” said the 54-year-old owner, a U.S. citizen who was born in Puerto Rico but grew up in Mexico. He has been living in the United States for over three decades. The owner did not want to be identified because he fears his business could be raided by Immigration officials.

“I am worried for our workforce and our clients,” many of whom are Venezuelan, he said.

At least 22 of his 30-some employees are on TPS, and many are concerned about what will happen next.

At around 11:30 am on Wednesday, he received a call from the manager of his warehouse in Hialeah who was anxious and scared. Someone was knocking on the door, and they were not sure whether or not to answer.

Eventually, the owner told the employee to open the door, and it turned out to be pest control.

“Everybody is just really nervous.”

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