Responding to reports of Somali gang activity in Minnesota, President Trump has removed all Somalis in the state from TPS protection. TPS, as described frequently on this blog, is the status of “temporary protection” against removal for certain nationalities living illegally in the US. It typically is granted to citizens of home countries experiencing extreme natural or man-made crises. In the case of Somalia, that African nation has been in a virtually continuous state of civil war for as long as anyone can remember.
It is not clear how many persons will actually be impacted by the change. In March, there were only 705 Somali TPS recipients in the entire US (compared with about 1.3 millions of all nationalities). The number in Minnesota is unclear, though that upper-midwest state has become a major center for Somalis in America, hosting up to 100,000. Many, however, have already acquired citizenship and among those unnaturalized comparative few are under TPS protection.
Nevertheless, removing TPS for them hopefully with an eye toward getting rid of the nearly 1.3 million others is a step in the right direction.
For more, see Breitbart News.