From a White House podi­um in May, U.S. Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Sec­re­tary Ale­jan­dro May­orkas out­lined new le­gal path­ways to the Unit­ed States for Venezue­lans and oth­ers, along with a “very clear” mes­sage for those come il­le­gal­ly.

“Our bor­ders are not open. Peo­ple who cross our bor­der un­law­ful­ly and with­out a le­gal ba­sis to re­main will be prompt­ly processed and re­moved,” he said.

On Wednes­day, May­orkas an­nounced tem­po­rary le­gal sta­tus for an es­ti­mat­ed 472,000 Venezue­lans who had ar­rived in the coun­try as of Ju­ly 31 — in­clud­ing some who ig­nored his stern warn­ings and came il­le­gal­ly. Cir­cum­stances change, but the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion’s sharp ex­pan­sion of Tem­po­rary Pro­tect­ed Sta­tus may com­pli­cate its mes­sag­ing.

Many Venezue­lans will mi­grate to the Unit­ed States with or with­out prospects for TPS, a 1990 law that em­pow­ers the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty sec­re­tary to grant el­i­gi­bil­i­ty for work per­mits in re­new­able in­cre­ments of up to 18 months to peo­ple whose home coun­tries are deemed un­safe due to nat­ur­al dis­as­ters or civ­il strife.

But ad­min­is­tra­tion crit­ics say the vast sweep of May­orkas’s an­nounce­ment will en­cour­age oth­er Venezue­lans to try to en­ter the U.S., fig­ur­ing that warn­ings of swift de­por­ta­tions ring hol­low and an­oth­er ex­pan­sion will fol­low.

Smug­glers will seize on the news, said Chad Wolf, act­ing Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty sec­re­tary un­der Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, whose ad­min­is­tra­tion sought to se­vere­ly lim­it and re­duce use of TPS.

“It’s just go­ing to in­cen­tivize more and more, be­cause you’re giv­ing them a ben­e­fit that they want,” he said.

Oth­ers dis­agree. Out­side a Mex­i­co City bus sta­tion Fri­day, U.S.-bound Venezue­lans, none of whom had heard the TPS news, said con­di­tions at home drove them. Dan­ny Romero, 45, flashed a fam­i­ly pho­to to ex­plain his mo­ti­va­tions.

“The one who is 18 years old wants to study med­i­cine, but how can I pay for his school if I don’t have the mon­ey? I can’t ru­in that dream,” said Romero, who left the north­ern city of Va­len­cia on Sept. 2.

He came with a nephew and just a few be­long­ings in a back­pack, with his chil­dren and their moth­er re­main­ing be­hind in Venezuela. The son who hopes to be­come a doc­tor is cur­rent­ly work­ing as a bar­ber, and an­oth­er, 14, sells draw­ings for a dol­lar each.

A po­lit­i­cal, so­cial and eco­nom­ic cri­sis over the last decade has pushed mil­lions of Venezue­lans in­to pover­ty, with teach­ers, pro­fes­sors and pub­lic em­ploy­ees re­ly­ing on side jobs or re­mit­tances from rel­a­tives abroad to make ends meet. At least 7.3 mil­lion have left the coun­try, with many risk­ing an of­ten-har­row­ing route to the Unit­ed States.

This week’s an­nounce­ment of sta­tus for 472,000 Venezue­lans came on top of more than 242,000 who were pre­vi­ous­ly cov­ered un­der TPS grants in 2021 and 2022.

Re­turn­ing home to Venezuela is un­safe “due to the en­dur­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an, se­cu­ri­ty, po­lit­i­cal, and en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions,” May­orkas said.

“How­ev­er, it is crit­i­cal that Venezue­lans un­der­stand that those who have ar­rived here af­ter Ju­ly 31, 2023, are not el­i­gi­ble for such pro­tec­tion, and in­stead will be re­moved when they are found to not have a le­gal ba­sis to stay,” he said.

Un­der May­orkas’ watch, TPS grew to cov­er more than 600,000 peo­ple from 16 coun­tries as of the end of March, ac­cord­ing to the Con­gres­sion­al Re­search Ser­vice. On Thurs­day the sec­re­tary ex­tend­ed pro­tec­tions to an es­ti­mat­ed 14,600 Afghans, on top of the 3,100 who al­ready had them.

De­mo­c­ra­t­ic may­ors and gov­er­nors have in­creas­ing­ly pres­sured the White House to help more with the mi­gra­to­ry in­flux. The city of New York says 40% of the rough­ly 60,000 asy­lum-seek­ers it hous­es came from Venezuela, and 15,000 of them will now qual­i­fy for TPS.

More Venezue­lans were en­coun­tered at the bor­der this month than na­tion­als of any oth­er coun­try ex­cept Mex­i­co, ac­cord­ing to U.S. Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion fig­ures re­leased by Mex­i­can Pres­i­dent An­drés Manuel López Obrador. Venezue­lans were stopped 25,777 times the first 17 days of Sep­tem­ber, up 63% from the same pe­ri­od a month ear­li­er. Those in­clud­ed some peo­ple ad­mit­ted of­fi­cial­ly for sched­uled asy­lum ap­point­ments, but the vast ma­jor­i­ty were il­le­gal en­tries.

Je­re­my MacGillivray, deputy rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Unit­ed Na­tions’ In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Mi­gra­tion in Mex­i­co, de­clined to pre­dict the im­pact of the TPS ex­pan­sion but said, based on past ex­pe­ri­ence, that “it is like­ly that mea­sures of this kind, even when pos­i­tive, en­cour­age peo­ple to set out.”

Smug­glers sell their ser­vices by say­ing, “Look, Pres­i­dent Biden an­nounced the ex­pan­sion of this mea­sure for Venezue­lans, now is the time to come to the bor­der,” MacGillivray said.

Pe­dro Luis Guer­ra, a Venezue­lan who lived in a Chica­go po­lice sta­tion lob­by af­ter reach­ing the city in April with his wife and young child, said TPS will be “a great help” to his fam­i­ly. “This is what we’ve want­ed for so long, be­cause we came here to suc­ceed and to work, to pro­vide for our­selves and not to be re­ly­ing on oth­ers,” he said.

Guer­ra said Venezue­lans close­ly fol­low U.S. im­mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy news but this week’s de­vel­op­ments won’t en­cour­age more to come be­cause “those who ar­rive af­ter Ju­ly, this law won’t ap­ply to them, so for them the sit­u­a­tion re­mains the same.”

But Jen­ny Martínez, a 39-year-old nurse who saw her salary eat­en up by in­fla­tion back home, said con­di­tions there are “too ter­ri­ble” and Venezue­lans are so des­per­ate that many will try to reach the U.S. re­gard­less of what awaits them in terms of le­gal sta­tus.

Speak­ing in Mex­i­co City across the street from the bus sta­tion where she hoped to board a bus north along with her teenage daugh­ter and tod­dler son, Martínez said the fam­i­ly has been liv­ing off re­mit­tances from her hus­band in Utah for the last 18 months and now they’re hop­ing to join him there.

“The (Venezue­lan) gov­ern­ment gives you that min­i­mum wage, and what does one do with that? Noth­ing,” she said. “Venezue­lans are go­ing to try to en­ter no mat­ter what, with or with­out pa­pers. This is about cross­ing to be able to work, to be able to send mon­ey to grand­par­ents.” —MEX­I­CO CITY (AP)

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Sto­ry by REGI­NA GAR­CIA CANO AND EL­LIOT SP­A­GAT | As­so­ci­at­ed Press
El­liot Sp­a­gat re­port­ed from San Diego. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Re­bec­ca San­tana in Wash­ing­ton, Christo­pher Sher­man in Mex­i­co City and Melis­sa Winder in Chica­go con­tributed.