By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-03-06 17:36:20 | Updated at 2025-03-06 22:05:53
4 hours ago
US President Donald Trump’s administration is planning to revoke temporary legal status for some 240,000 Ukrainians who fled the conflict with Russia, a senior Trump official and three sources familiar with the matter said, potentially putting them on a fast track to deportation.
The move, expected as soon as April, would be a stunning reversal of the welcome Ukrainians received under US President Joe Biden’s administration.
The planned rollback of protections for Ukrainians was under way before Trump publicly feuded with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week.
It is part of a broader Trump administration effort to strip legal status from more than 1.8 million migrants allowed to enter the US under temporary humanitarian parole programmes launched under the Biden administration, the sources said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back on the Reuters report in a post on social media, saying “no decision has been made at this time”.
US Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said on Wednesday that the department had no new announcements. Ukrainian government agencies did not respond to requests for comment.
