Trump is cracking down on longstanding immigration programs. Here's what to know.

President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown is throwing hundreds of thousands of people’s authorization to live and work in the United States into flux as longstanding programs are eliminated.

A flurry of federal orders this year, rolling back several humanitarian, refugee and student visa programs, have terminated the legal status of at least 1.6 million people living in the country. Many of these programs date to the 1980s or 1990s, while others were created under former President Joe Biden.

"The Trump administration has done more to limit migration, both illegal and legal, than any administration in history," Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a news conference this year.

"Having a visa in the United States is not a right. It is a privilege. And the secretary of state — if you are deemed contrary to our country's foreign national interests — has the right to revoke that privilege."

Which immigration statuses has Trump targeted?

Federal officials have chipped away at several longstanding immigration programs, including those for students, minors and refugees.

One of the largest humanitarian programs under threat is called Temporary Protected Status, which allows people from countries with ongoing armed conflict or natural disasters or epidemics to live and work in the United States legally. It was signed into law by former president George H.W. Bush as part of the Immigration Act of 1990.

Anyone who commits a felony, or two misdemeanors is disqualified from the program.

As of March, about 1.3 million people were living in the U.S. with TPS, according to the American Immigration Council. Since then, Trump has revoked or announced plans to revoke the legal status of more than 1 million of those people, the group said.

Those countries whose TPS statuses are being targeted by Trump include Venezuela, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Nepal, Honduras, Nicaragua, Syria, South Sudan, Myanmar, Ethiopia and Haiti.

"They’re now in limbo. They don’t have anything," Dawn Pipek Guidone, an immigration attorney with offices in Mineola and Amityville, said of TPS recipients.

Elected officials and media reports have zeroed in on recent migrants. But half of immigrants living in Nassau County with temporary legal status or no legal status  — a total of about 28,000 people — have been in the U.S. for 20 or more years, according to 2023 data from the Migration Policy Institute. The same is true for 45% of those without permanent legal status living in Suffolk County, or 30,000 people. 

"You’re talking about people who’ve been here for 20, 30 years, and they’ve been here legally," said Ala Amoachi, an immigration attorney in East Islip.

"Many have their own businesses, landscaping businesses, or they own delis. They employ other people," she said. "They have kids who were born here. ... They’re grandparents. ... And oftentimes they have no connection left to their home country."

Which of these are Biden-era programs, and why did he start them?

Department of Homeland Security officials this year halted several Biden-era programs that allowed temporary humanitarian parole for hundreds of thousands of immigrants to live and work in the U.S. legally.

Once Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, up to 1,300 Ukrainians attempted to enter the U.S. each day at the southern border in Mexico. Soon after, Biden announced a program, called Uniting for Ukraine, which allowed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing the war to live and work in the U.S. temporarily.

The Trump administration halted all new applications for the program shortly after taking office last January.

A similar program, launched by Biden in 2023, was geared toward Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans with a sponsor in the U.S. It allowed those who passed a background check to live and work in the U.S. legally for two years.

The Trump administration paused that program in March, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court, stripping more than half a million people of their legal status. Immigration officials e-mailed those people, telling them their immigration status and employment authorization had been terminated and encouraged them to "self-deport immediately."

Are people in these categories here illegally — or is that even clear?

Many immigrants who lost their legal status risk being arrested and deported even as they seek alternate legal pathways to stay in the country.

"The real question for a lot of people is, do I wait for the government to come after me or do I do something affirmatively?" Amoachi said.

Some opt to file for asylum, a program for those fearing persecution in their home countries, though the denial rate for asylum cases has doubled since last year, according to government data. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are also arresting people with open asylum cases and upcoming court dates.

"Basically once you’re detained, that’s it for you," Amoachi said. "I hate to say that, but ... they’re going to move you to Louisiana. ... You’re not going to have access to your [attorney]. You’re far away. You have no ability to gather evidence for your own case."

"Everything is stacked against you," she said.

Are there legal challenges to any of this?

Several groups are suing the Trump administration over the termination of the immigration programs. The results of those efforts have been mixed.

In one example, a federal judge last month blocked Trump officials from terminating TPS for Syrians, saying the move was likely illegal. In another, the Supreme Court cleared the way for officials to strip more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants of their legal status.

“[The administration] really wants to just completely overhaul the entire immigration court so that everything is bent toward removal, removal, removal," Amoachi said.

In the meantime, longtime Long Island residents fear being deported to their home countries, their attorneys say.

"Most of my clients are fleeing crime," Guidone said. "They don’t want crime just as much as you don’t want crime."