WASHINGTON: Migrants in the United States on temporary protected status should seek permanent residence or leave for their home countries, US Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said on Sunday.

The remarks to CNN’s State of the Union programme follow last week’s split Supreme Court decision allowing President Donald Trump’s administration to strip hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants of a humanitarian status that protects them from deportation to home countries plagued by conflict and destitution.

“Either try to fill out the paperwork and be here underneath a permanent status or we’ll help you get back to your country,” Mullin said.

“We’ll actually give you a plane ticket, plus roughly $2,100 to help you re-establish when you get there, but temporary protective status, according to the courts and in its name itself, is not permanent status,” he added.

Federal law allows the administration to grant temporary legal residency in the United States to people fleeing war, disaster or other adverse conditions. The status had previously been renewed successively and, despite the move to end these protections, the State Department currently warns against traveling to either Haiti or Syria, citing widespread violence, crime, terrorism and kidnapping.

The United States first provided TPS to Haitians after a devastating earthquake in 2010, and to Syrians after their country descended into civil war in 2012. The prospect of large-scale deportations faces opposition, even among some Republicans. Also speaking to CNN on Sunday, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said it was not safe for Haitians to return and that the removal of diligent workers would hurt the Ohio economy and leave the healthcare industry short-staffed.

During the 2024 election, Trump falsely accused Haitians living in Ohio of eating others’ household pets. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority found, however, that Haitians suing the administration were unlikely to succeed in their argument that the administration’s actions were racially biased.

The presence of Haitians in the state has helped spur economic revival in some Ohio areas that had fallen into post-industrial decline, boosting wages and job creation, Reuters has reported.

“It’s Haitians who many times are taking care of your mom or your dad who has Alzheimer’s, taking care of family members who might be in a nursing home,” said DeWine. “And to say we’re going to pull all those out, it’s just not in our own self-interest.”

New ICE chief

US President Donald Trump on Saturday nominated a former police officer from Oklahoma to be the next director of the controversial US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE.

Trump said Lance Schroyer was a former state trooper and United States Marine “with DECADES of experience locking up the worst of the worst.” Schroyer would succeed Todd Lyons, appointed acting director of ICE in March 2025. Lyons stepped down from the position in May, a few weeks after the dismissal of then secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem.

Lyons, Noem and Gregory Bovino, the former head of Customs and Border Control, were the face of Trump’s mass deportation campaign when it was at its most visible and controversial point some months ago.

The proposed new head of ICE has been helping wage that campaign, Noem’s successor Markwayne Mullin wrote in a post on X. “Lance is coming straight from the operational field where he ran large scale operations and worked alongside state and federal partners to remove illegal aliens from Oklahoma,” Mullin said.

Individuals nominated to head federal agencies are supposed to be confirmed by the Senate, but that has not happened with ICE since 2017. Since then, its leaders have served in that capacity as interim directors.

“It has been 11 years since @DHSgov has had a Senate-confirmed @ICEgov Director. The Senate must quickly confirm Lance Schroyer,” Mullin wrote.

Many Americans view the Trump administration’s anti-immigration drive as excessive. The controversy soared when federal agents killed two US citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, as they protested enforcement raids in the northern city of Minneapolis.

Deportations continue, with Americans who disagree with them now often focusing their ire on sprawling detention facilities where detainees are held.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2026