Sen. Eric Schmitt released a presidential memorandum Thursday showing that Biden's senior advisors urged the then-president to expand Temporary Protected Status before leaving office — a move Schmitt said could have shielded roughly 3.1 million noncitizens from Trump's planned mass deportations.
The memo, dated January 2, 2024, appears to be misdated and was actually produced in the waning days of Biden's lame-duck presidency, Schmitt said. The Missouri Republican obtained the internal document and posted it on X.
His team was searching for ways to lock in his mass-migration regime before Trump took power.
TPS grants foreign nationals work permits and protection from deportation. A "redesignation" extends that shield to newly arrived migrants. By the time Biden was preparing to leave office, the administration was overseeing protected status for roughly 1.2 million people from 16 countries, the memo stated.
The advisors recommended adding Ecuador and Guatemala to the TPS list — a move the memo estimated would shield more than 2 million additional migrants from deportation. They also flagged concerns about TPS expirations coming in "2025 or early 2026" for those already covered.
The memo acknowledged that stakeholder groups were prepared to litigate against any Trump administration effort to terminate the protections. "Prior Federal litigation brought by advocates during the first Trump Administration was successful in halting the Trump Administration's efforts to terminate TPS," the memo noted, while adding that the prior failure stemmed from a lack of factual record "which is something that could be rectified."
The advisors also flagged the political risk. Republicans have argued TPS has become "a form of amnesty" that encourages more illegal immigration, the memo noted. "Should the Secretary of Homeland Security redesignate Venezuelan nationals for TPS, Republicans are likely to argue that YOU provided amnesty to Tren de Aragua gang members," the memo warned.
The memo pointed to Biden's expansion of TPS for nationals from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Burma, Lebanon, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Haiti.
While the full proposals in the memo were never implemented, Biden did extend TPS protections for nearly 1 million noncitizens in the days after it was produced. The Supreme Court has since ruled 6-3 that the administration can terminate TPS for Haitian and Syrian migrants.