President Biden and his aides have spent their final days in office announcing 32 executive actions — on topics from immigration to offshore drilling — aimed at tying up President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.
The lame-duck 82-year-old’s flurry of late moves to try to make himself a hero to Democrats and obstruct his successor’s agenda include:
Granting Temporary Protected Status to almost 1 million people, meaning they are protected from deportation and entitled to work permits. The action, decreed by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Jan. 10, shields 234,000 Salvadorans, 1,900 Sudanese, 104,000 Ukrainians and 600,000 Venezuelans for a period of 18 months.
Trump’s appointees at the Department of Homeland Security can move to revoke the TPS designations, but it will likely require a lengthy legal fight.
In late 2020, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Trump’s decision to revoke the status for 300,000 people from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Sudan — two years after the 45th president issued the order.