New DHS Enforcement Program Fails to Offer Sufficient Protection to Venezuelans
Please see below statement from Refugees International Director for Europe and the Americas Yael Schacher:
“The new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) enforcement program for Venezuelans fails to offer sufficient protection to people experiencing the largest displacement crisis in the Western hemisphere. With this program, the Biden administration is also betraying its promise to ensure access to asylum at the border and rebuild the U.S. refugee resettlement program.
The announced Venezuelan parole program will benefit those with valid passports and financial sponsors in the United States but will not offer protection to the most vulnerable among displaced Venezuelans, including families stranded in transit in countries like Honduras and Guatemala. Colombia and Peru have accepted millions of Venezuelans and offered them status and integration support. If the United States wants to do its part, temporary protection for 24,000 of the least vulnerable while providing few services is just not enough. Venezuelans who cross the U.S. border to seek asylum will be returned to Mexico, which, just a year ago, Secretary Mayorkas wrote “imposed substantial and unjustifiable human costs on individuals who were exposed to harm.”
Refugees International reiterates its opposition to Title 42, an unjustified public-health ban on asylum seeking at the U.S. border that will now put Venezuelans at risk—as it has so many asylum seekers of other nationalities over the last two and a half years.
The Biden administration’s use of humanitarian parole must be applied equitably and in a way that truly provides protection to groups of people in urgent need of protection.”
For more information or to schedule an interview, please contact Refugees International’s VP for Strategic Outreach Sarah Sheffer at ssheffer@refugeesinternational.org.
Banner Photo Caption: Venezuelan migrants walk along the U.S. Border fence after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico to turn themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol on September 22, 2022 in El Paso, Texas. Photo by Joe Raedle via Getty Images.