DHS indefinitely extended TPS for Ukraine and Sudan on Monday; those with protections will retain status for the time being. TPS for these countries was set to expire on October 19, but the agency declined to announce any decision on the future of over 100,000 people impacted, only saying that an announcement “will be made at the appropriate time.” This is a repeat of what the administration did with TPS for El Salvador last month, leaving 200,000 people in limbo as they wait to see what the future holds for them. For right now, people from these countries maintain their TPS status and their work authorization, but has provided no guidance for people on TPS or their employers on how to handle the situation and what to expect in the near future. The administration had already terminated TPS for more than 1 million people from 13 countries.
The Trump administration continues its crusade to purge voter rolls across the country ahead of the midterm elections in less than 2 weeks. Last week, the administration sent an unsecured thumbdrive to Los Angeles County officials (with a password on a sticky note), alleging that it contained a list of 20,000 noncitizens registered to vote in CA and demanding that they be removed from the voter rolls. Election officials refused to inspect the thumbdrive as doing so would be a violation of strict cybersecurity protocols. Moreover, it is not clear why they only sent the drive to Los Angeles County officials who have no authority over voter registration rolls in the rest of the state. The administration gave the county only 48 hours to remove the individuals before then filing a lawsuit. California officials point out that the administration has provided no evidence that any of the individuals listed are not citizens and point to last month when the administration sent a smaller list to Nevada which found that every individual listed was actually a citizen.
The administration has also been sending armed ICE officers door-to-door, looking for non-citizen voters across the country in an operation that started last month. However, a federal judge on Wednesday ordered a partial halt to the operation as it relied on an unreliable database likely to catch up American citizens in its overly broad dragnet. Plaintiffs alleged, and the judge agreed, that the operation was being carried out “in a way that intimidates and threatens the participation” of voters and get-out-the-vote efforts.
