After US President Donald Trump‘s public feud with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, now the Trump administration is planning to immediately deport some 240,000 Ukrainians who fled the conflict with Russia and came to the US, Reuters reported. This would be a reversal of the Joe Biden administration’s policy of welcoming the Ukrainians. The Biden administration launched ‘Uniting for Ukraine’ in 2022 under which US-based individuals and organizations could sponsor a Ukrainian individual or a family in the United States.
The decision, however, has nothing to do with the White House showdown and was in the making for quite some time, the report said. It is part of the Trump administration’s effort to make the country free from migrants who entered the country under temporary humanitarian parole programs launched under the Biden administration.
Trump vowed to end temporary parole programs in an executive order on his first day in office, putting over 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who entered the US legally at risk of deportation, as well as more than 70,000 Afghans who fled the Taliban.
Change in US-Ukraine dynamics after White House feud
The US temporarily suspended military aid and the sharing of intelligence, turning the heat on Ukraine after Zelenskyy left the White House meeting without signing the minerals agreement. Trump and Vice President JD Vance accused Zelenskyy of not being grateful to the US for the mediation the US has been doing.
The night after the US stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine, the Russian army attacked Zelenskyy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih with ballistic missiles, killing at least four people and injuring more than 30 others.“A ballistic missile struck an ordinary hotel” in Kryvyi Rih, an industrious city in Dnipropetrovsk region, Zelenskyy said in a statement Thursday morning. “Unfortunately, four people were killed in this attack,” he added.
“Just before the attack, volunteers from a humanitarian organization — citizens of Ukraine, the United States, and the United Kingdom — had checked into the hotel. They survived because they managed to get down from their rooms in time,” Zelenskyy added.