White House Denies Plans to Deport Ukrainians Who Fled War

The White House called a report that President Donald Trump’s administration plans to revoke the temporary legal status of 240,000 Ukrainians who fled the war as “fake news” on Tuesday. Reuters reported, citing a senior Trump official and three others familiar with the matter, that the president could formalize the plans as soon as April, putting the impacted migrants on a fast track for deportation. The news agency said the move would form but one piece of a larger effort by Trump to revoke the legal status of roughly 1.8 million migrants admitted to the United States via temporary humanitarian parole programs that were launched by the Biden administration. Reuters said Trump plans to revoke status for some 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans under the programs later this month. “This is more fake news from Reuters based on anonymous sources who have no idea what they are talking about,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote in response to the report in a social media post. “The truth: no decision has been made at this time.” The report comes less than a week after Trump and Vice President JD Vance had a blowup in the Oval Office with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, demanding that he show more gratitude to the U.S. for its support. He has since paused military aid to the war torn country, though the two sides are discussing an economic agreement that could restore support. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has opened communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered an unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 that experts say violated international law.