More than 14,600 Afghans and 7,900 Cameroonians are legally in the US under the programme which grants temporary safety from conflict and instability.

The administration of President Donald Trump has moved to end legal protections for thousands of Afghans and Cameroonians legally living in the United States.

On Friday, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security confirmed the decision, which will affect approximately 14,600 Afghans and 7,900 Cameroonians.

Those individuals were able to live in the US under a designation called “temporary protected status” or TPS.

The US government typically offers TPS to individuals already in the US for whom it may be unsafe to return, at least in the short term, due to conflict, natural disaster or other circumstances.

But the Trump administration has attempted to sever TPS protections for multiple nationalities since taking office in January, as part of a broader crackdown on immigration, both legal and otherwise.

In a statement, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that conditions in Afghanistan and Cameroon no longer met the criteria for TPS.

But critics point out that fighting has raged in Cameroon between the government and separatists since 2017.

And in Afghanistan, the Taliban has been in control of the government since the withdrawal of US and Western forces in 2021. Its leadership has been accused of perpetrating widespread human rights abuses, including arresting members of the previous US-backed government and banning women from many aspects of public life.

Refugee groups quickly condemned the move. Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the president of the nonprofit Global Refuge, called the revocation of the TPS for Afghans “a morally indefensible betrayal”. She warned they could face persecution if returned to Afghanistan.

“Afghanistan today is still reeling from Taliban rule, economic collapse, and humanitarian disaster,” she said in a statement. “Nothing about that reality has changed.”

While the US evacuated more than 82,000 Afghans to the US, the vast majority were granted temporary “parole” or other legal statuses based on their direct work with the US government.

Still, the end of TPS would still affect a significant portion of that total group. Their TPS status will end in May.

Veterans groups and politicians on both sides of the political spectrum have called for more legal avenues for Afghans to seek safety in the US, particularly if they worked alongside US troops or the US-backed government.

Meanwhile, US lawmakers earlier this month urged the Trump administration to extend the status for Cameroonians, who face civilian attacks in their home country. They are now set to lose that protection in June.

“The country’s worsening security situation, combined with its ongoing humanitarian cries and human rights abuses, makes return impossible for Cameroonian nationals,” the lawmakers wrote.

Cameroon has seen clashes between Anglophone separatists and Francophone security forces that have resulted in extrajudicial killings, attacks on civilians and widespread displacement.

The Trump administration has moved to close several avenues to temporarily stay in the US, arguing it was “restoring the rule of law”.

But many of the moves target immigration categories established under Trump’s predecessor and political rival, former President Joe Biden.

Trump has also sought to pursue a campaign of “mass deportation” during his second term. Removing legal protections from immigrants allows the government to potentially remove them from the country.

This is not the first time Trump has targeted TPS, though. During his first term, from 2017 to 2021, he tried to end most TPS enrollment but was thwarted by federal courts.

During his second term, Trump reembarked on a similar push. In February, he sought to strip nearly 300,000 Venezuelans of their TPS.

But in late March, a US district judge blocked his attempt, saying that his government’s characterisation of the migrants as criminals “smacks of racism”.

Trump has also moved to nix the humanitarian parole programme that granted legal status to more than 500,000 Haitians, Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans under Biden.

On Thursday, however, a federal judge blocked Trump from ending the programme, which would have stripped nearly half a million people of their legal status.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies