After building lives in Minnesota, many Venezuelans fear rollback of TPS

As protests broke out following the disputed Venezuelan election this summer, Miguel David Pacheco Gómez tracked the rallies and government crackdown on social media. From his adopted home in Hopkins, he looked for ways to show his support for opposition leader María Corina Machado.

The former student organizer first fled Venezuela in 2016, a year when hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest the economic policies and demand the recall election of President Nicolás Maduro.

“I feel sad not to be able to be there right now, also to do my part, to go out and protest,” Pacheco Gómez said from the sidelines of a softball game in September. “But I think it would also be in vain, maybe I would be imprisoned, I would be dead or they would be torturing me.”

Pacheco Gómez arrived in the U.S. in 2021, and made his way to Minnesota, where he joined a tight-knit community of Venezuelan immigrants and asylum seekers that has nearly doubled in the last three years.

One in four Venezuelans has fled the country in recent years due to the country’s political and economic turmoil. While most landed in neighboring countries, more than 500,000 are in the U.S., where many are eligible for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or another program, humanitarian parole.

But the presidential election of Donald Trump has made the future uncertain for many Venezuelans, as he has threatened to scale back programs that shield more than 1 million immigrants and carry out the largest mass deportations in U.S. history.

Ana Pottratz Acosta, an immigration attorney who teaches at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law, advises those who do not have U.S. citizenship to talk to a lawyer and get in the safest position possible.

“I think we need to wait and see what happens with the incoming Trump administration in terms of what their decision is to re-designate Venezuela for TPS,” Pottratz Acosta said, noting that the secretary of Homeland Security has to prove that the situation in Venezuela has improved to end the designation.

Four years ago, when the local Venezuelan Softball League started, only four teams were playing. Now, 12 teams compete from April to October every year. Pacheco Gómez joined the league two years ago. He manages a team called Los Niños de la Tapestry, in honor of his church. The church is one hub of the local Venezuelan community, the softball league another.

Ten years ago, Melissa Melnick Gonzalez founded the Tapestry Church, a Lutheran church that offers services in Spanish and English. A few members of the community were from Venezuela then, but since mostly early 2023, the Venezuelan community at the church has grown.

Some apply for asylum when they arrive in the U.S. The asylum backlog in the Bloomington Immigration Court has grown from seven cases in 2018 to 931 cases this year. Melnick Gonzalez provides help in finding clothing and jobs and assists with legal matters.

With five other congregations, Tapestry also agreed to sponsor Venezuelans through humanitarian parole, a program launched by the Biden administration to provide legal pathways to immigration. The church has filled out more than 30 applications since March 2023 but is still waiting to hear back on those cases.

A year and a half ago, the church helped Pacheco Gómez apply for family reunification through humanitarian parole for his daughter, who stayed in Venezuela. So far, he has not heard back.

“It has been the hardest thing in my life to be separated from her,” said Pacheco Gómez.

Between October 2022 and the end of August, close to 117,000 Venezuelans came to the U.S. under the program, according to Customs and Border Patrol data. However, Biden announced in October that people enrolled in the humanitarian parole process will not be able to renew their status when they have completed the two years of the program.

As many as 350,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. are currently protected from deportation under TPS and have the right to work. But that designation will expire next year, in April for those who applied for TPS for the first time last year and in September for those who have been TPS holders since 2021.

Trump is also expected to target refugee resettlement programs. In Minnesota, 91 Venezuelan refugees arrived in fiscal year 2024, according to U.S. State Department data. In fiscal year 2023, only 19 Venezuelan refugees resettled in Minnesota.

Every Sunday, Tapestry congregants share a meal in the basement of the church. There, Gladys Garcia, called Mileidy by her friends, discussed how she moved to Minnesota in 2019 with her son. Her daughter was already living in the U.S., where she played tennis; in Venezuela, she was ranked in the top three in the country. Garcia, who was on the Venezuelan volleyball team, had a tourist visa to the U.S.

“I had no intention to emigrate,” said Garcia. “But the circumstances forced us.”

In Venezuela, Garcia and her family faced harassment. She opposed the government and signed the “Tascon list” demanding the recall of president Hugo Chavez, Maduro’s predecessor.

Garcia and her family now live under TPS and have applied for asylum. She passed a paralegal certification and helps other immigrants with their paperwork, while working as a Spanish teacher. She was worried about the upcoming Trump presidency, but after the election, Garcia thought that she should wait and see what Trump’s government will look like.

“He was very harsh on immigrants during his campaign,” Garcia said. “I felt like he was going to deport me; I took it personally.”

About the partnership This story comes to you from Sahan Journal, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering Minnesota’s immigrants and communities of color. Sign up for a free newsletter to receive Sahan’s stories in your inbox.