The Biden administration on Friday issued sweeping extensions of deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of people from Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela in a move that makes it almost impossible for President-elect Donald J. Trump to swiftly strip the benefit when he takes office.

The extension of Temporary Protected Status, as the program is called, allows the immigrants to remain in the country with work permits and a shield from deportation for another 18 months from the expiration of their current protection in the spring. Late last year, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken recommended the protections be extended in a series of letters.

For decades, Democratic and Republican administrations have designated the protection for citizens of countries that are in upheaval and deemed unsafe to return to. President Biden has expanded who could receive the status, as war erupted in Ukraine and instability gripped countries like Venezuela and Haiti.

“These designations are rooted in careful review and interagency collaboration to ensure those affected by environmental disasters and instability are given the protections they need while continuing to contribute meaningfully to our communities,” Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, said in a statement.

Mr. Trump has derided the program and vowed to end it, at least for certain countries. Immigrant advocates had been urging the Biden administration to extend it for many of those countries before he takes office.

In his first term, Mr. Trump terminated the status for about 400,000 people from El Salvador and other countries, and then faced legal challenges.

According to the Congressional Research Service, more than a million migrants from countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East had Temporary Protected Status as of 2024.

The move makes it legally difficult for Mr. Trump to roll back the protections for citizens of the four countries, at least until they expire some time in 2026.

“Because President Biden has extended protection for the nationals of all these countries, President Trump will be unable to deport these individuals any time soon, “ said Steve Yale-Loehr, an immigration scholar at Cornell Law School.

”Trump can’t ignore what Congress wrote into law in 1990,” he said.

About 600,000 Venezuelans who currently have the protection will be allowed to renew and remain in the United States until October 2026, and approximately 232,000 immigrants from El Salvador will be able to do so. More than 100,000 Ukrainians will be able to remain in the United States until August 2026. Some 1,900 people from Sudan will also be allowed to renew their status.

The program was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush to ensure that foreign citizens already in the United States can remain in the country if it is not safe for them to return to their home country because of a natural disaster, armed conflict or other upheaval.

On the campaign trail, JD Vance, the vice president-elect, called the program illegal when he criticized Haitians who had settled in his home state of Ohio and benefited from it. Haiti has been experiencing political turmoil and gang violence, and some 200,000 of its citizens are protected from removal under T.P.S. until early 2026.

“We’re going to stop doing mass grants of Temporary Protected Status,” Mr. Vance said in October.

Critics have argued that the temporary protections are extended repeatedly and serve as a de facto means to enable people to stay in the country indefinitely, contrary to its intention of being a short-term solution.

While the program has become all but permanent for many immigrants, it also highlights how troubled many corners of the world are and the failure of Congress to pass legislation to update the U.S. immigration system to the realities of contemporary global migration.

Immigrants from several countries, including El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, have been eligible for the protection for more than two decades. Other countries, such as Ethiopia, Lebanon and Syria were added more recently.

Gonzalo Roa, 43, a Venezuelan who is a beneficiary, said that he was anxious about the fate of the program.

“It is great news that it’s being renewed,” said Mr. Roa, who lives in Columbus, Ohio. He works at a car dealership and runs a small restaurant with his wife.

Without the temporary status, Mr. Roa said, he would lose his job at the dealership and his two Venezuelan-born children would not be eligible for college scholarships and other benefits that require legal status.

A facility where users can inject drugs under nurses’ supervision is set to open in Glasgow on Monday after almost a decade of debate over how to deal with the city’s unwanted status as a European capital for narcotic-related deaths.

Offering hot drinks and a lounge with sofas, as well as booths for injections, the Safer Drug Consumption Facility is the first of its kind in Britain and follows similar initiatives in other cities around the world, including New York.

Those using the facility, which has been named the Thistle in a reference to a national emblem of Scotland, will bring their own drugs. Staff will not administer injections but will be on hand to monitor safety.

How will the drug consumption room work?

The new facility, which will operate throughout the year, has a reception and waiting area, a separate space with individual booths where injecting can take place, a recovery area and an aftercare area where advice will be offered by charities and support organizations.

Users will have access to clean syringes, needles and swabs, and will be allocated one of eight booths.

Lynn Macdonald, service manager at the Thistle, told Scotland’s public broadcaster, STV, that users “don’t have to show us what drugs they are going to use.” But they will be asked to do so, she added, “so we can talk to them about harm reduction. In the using space, there will be nurses who will supervise injections.”

Each booth has a mirror that is slightly tilted so that staff can observe the injection is taking place safely, without being too close to the person. “This also gives them a bit of dignity,” Ms. Macdonald said. “That’s key to this service — that people are treated with respect and dignity when they come here.”

The Scottish government is funding the initiative by providing £2 million, or about $2.4 million, a year.

What do organizers hope to achieve, and why in Glasgow?

There are now more than 100 drug consumption rooms worldwide, researchers say, including in Europe, Canada, the United States and Australia. Supporters say such facilities cut the risk of overdose and infection, reduce the costs of acute hospital admissions, and put users in touch with health care professionals who can offer drug addiction treatment.

In Scotland, which has the highest rate of recorded drugs deaths in Europe, the Thistle is seen as one answer to a lengthy debate about how to combat the harm from drugs. In 2023, 1,172 people died from drug misuse — a rise of 12 percent on the previous year.

Opioids such as heroin, morphine and methadone were the most common drugs connected to fatalities, being implicated in 937 deaths.

In 2015, there was a significant outbreak of H.I.V. in Glasgow, particularly among those injecting in public places. The virus was linked to homelessness and injecting in public spaces, according to the Glasgow City Council.

Calls for a safe drug consumption facility gained traction after a 2016 report that estimated that around 400 to 500 people were regularly injecting drugs in Glasgow’s city center, increasing the risk of infection and causing a wider hazard to the public from discarded equipment including needles.

The City Council said that research showed such facilities reduce drug-related harm, including overdose and death, and the transmission of infectious diseases, and produced “an overall cost saving” by reducing calls on the health service, and cutting the time spent by the police and courts in handling drug-related issues.

Glasgow’s initiative marks a significant, if contested, moment for British drugs policy after years of debate over how to reduce overdoses and take consumption off the streets. Drug laws that cover Scotland are set by the British Parliament at Westminster, but are enforced by Scottish courts, which operate their own system.

The new facility became legally possible after Scotland’s most senior lawyer, who is known as the Lord Advocate, said that it would not be in the public interest to prosecute users for possession of illegal drugs in a safe consumption facility.

The British government said that it respects that decision and will not interfere with the Glasgow project. While it says it will watch the results of the initiative, it said there are no plans to reintroduce such schemes in England or Wales.

What do critics say?

Some local residents oppose the opening because they fear it could bring more drug dealing into the area.

Other critics worry that it will be counterproductive. One charity, Faces & Voices of Recovery U.K., said in a statement that there was “nothing kind about offering people a place to continue destructive behaviors that keep them trapped in cycles of chaos, compulsion, and despair.”

By focusing on consumption rather than recovery, it added, “these rooms communicate a devastating message: ‘We don’t believe you can get better.’”

But Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, welcomed the opening, saying in a statement on Friday that “while this facility is not a silver bullet, it is another significant step forward and will complement other efforts to reduce harms and deaths.”

Israeli warplanes bombed ports and a power plant in Yemeni territory controlled by the Houthis on Friday, the Israeli military said, in the latest attempt to force the Iranian-backed militant group to stop firing at Israel and commercial ships in the Red Sea.

Israel has escalated its strikes on the Houthis in recent weeks in response to repeated attacks by the Yemeni militia, which has been launching missiles and drones against Israel in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. The United States and Britain have also struck Yemen repeatedly in an effort to secure international waterways from Houthi attacks, including new American strikes on Wednesday.

But it was far from clear whether Israel and its allies could successfully compel the Houthis to end their attacks on Israel and on ships through a bombing campaign. Months of Israeli and American airstrikes have failed to deter the well-equipped militia from conducting attacks.

The Israeli military said it had bombed the Hezyaz power station near Sana, the Houthi-controlled capital, and the Red Sea ports of Hudaydah and Ras Isa. The power station is not far from where thousands of Yemenis had gathered in a weekly rally in solidarity with Palestinians, and Ras Isa is Yemen’s main oil export terminal.

Experts have warned that attacking ports like Hudaydah, a major conduit for essential supplies in northern Yemen, could further worsen what is already one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Rocked by civil war for more than a decade, millions of people in Yemen face the threat of malnutrition, according to the United Nations.

The Israeli military said it had struck targets at sites that were being used by the Houthis for military purposes. More than 20 aircraft took part in the operation, which required in-flight refueling, and dropped about 50 munitions, said an military official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity in accordance with military protocol.

One worker at the Hezyaz power station was wounded, according to al-Masira, the Houthi-affiliated broadcaster. There were no other immediate reports of serious casualties.

“The port of Hudaydah is paralyzed and the port of Ras Isa is ablaze,” Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, said in a statement. “The message is clear: Anyone who harms Israel will be struck tenfold.”

The Houthis, who control much of western Yemen, are more than 1,000 miles from Israeli territory and have survived numerous efforts to defeat them since they rose to power in a civil war that began in 2014. The United States designates the Houthis as a terrorist group, and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, U.S. allies in the region, intervened in the civil war to fight against the Houthis.

Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 prompted the Gaza war, the Houthis have fired hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel. They have also hampered global shipping by firing at passing commercial freighters in a self-declared effort to enforce a blockade on Israel.

Over the past two months, the Houthis have stepped up their attacks, sending Israelis across central Israel rushing for bomb shelters late at night as air-raid sirens blare. On Thursday, Houthi militants fired three drones at Israeli territory; the Israeli military said it intercepted them all.

Israel has bombarded Yemen several times in response — sending its jets more than 1,000 miles to do so — but has struggled to decisively subdue the Houthis.

After the strikes on Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, said that “the Houthis are paying, and will continue to pay, a heavy price for their aggression against us.”

But Israel’s options against its faraway enemy are limited. Israel’s security establishment has never prioritized Yemen and for years did not intensively focus on gathering intelligence on the Houthis, experts say.

The Houthis rarely expend their munitions in massive barrages, instead firing a missile or a drone at a time. They could likely maintain that pace for a long time, military experts say. Even if there were a cease-fire in Gaza, the Houthis might continue firing in an attempt to leverage their newfound significance on the regional stage, they say.

On Friday, Mr. Katz threatened to kill Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the group’s leader, as well as its other commanders.

“No one is immune,” Mr. Katz said. “We will hunt you down and destroy the terror infrastructure which you built. Israel’s long arm will reach you, wherever you are.”

Israel’s intelligence agencies spent months hunting for Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, in the relatively small enclave of the Gaza Strip. Experts say it would be much more difficult to locate Houthi leaders in the much larger and less well-surveilled territory of Yemen.

Here are other developments in the region:

• An Israeli airstrike on Friday in southern Lebanon killed at least two people, according to the country’s health ministry, a day after Lebanon elected a new president amid resurgent hopes of peace and stability. The attack, which Lebanon’s state-run news agency said targeted a vehicle, comes with just over two weeks to go until a cease-fire agreement expires between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Amid accusations of cease-fire violations by both sides, Lebanon has reported to the U.N. Security Council that Israel had launched over 800 “ground and air attacks” since the cease-fire came into effect in November.

Johnatan Reiss, Euan Ward, Stephen Castle and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

The Biden Administration said on Friday that it was offering $25 million for information leading to the arrest of Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela.

The announcement is Washington’s retaliatory measure for Mr. Maduro’s decision to assume a third term in office on Friday. Mr. Maduro has presented no evidence that he won a July election, while his opponent Edmundo González has presented thousands of publicly available vote tallies that he says indicate he easily won the most votes.

The United States has recognized Mr. González as the president-elect of Venezuela and has urged Mr. Maduro to step aside.

In 2020, under the Trump administration, the State Department offered a $15 million reward for help arresting Mr. Maduro. At the time, he was indicted in the United States, accused in a decades-long narco-terrorism and international cocaine trafficking conspiracy. Mr. Maduro remains under indictment.

The Justice Department’s formal accusation of a foreign head of state was an unusual move that signaled the United States was likely to take an increasingly hard line against Mr. Maduro.

The new $25 million bounty represents an escalation.

The United States will also offer $25 million for information leading to the capture of the country’s interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, up from $10 million.

And the State Department added another reward: $15 million for help with detention of Venezuela’s defense minister, Padrino López.

Just minutes after Mr. Maduro was sworn in on Friday for another term, the U.S. Treasury Department also said it was placing new sanctions on eight Venezuelan officials, adding to a long list of Maduro allies already under sanction.

The measures freeze assets that the officials have in the United States.

“The United States and its allies in the region have pushed Maduro to commit to a democratic transition,” Bradley T. Smith, a treasury official, said in a statement. “Instead, Maduro and his representatives have continued their violent repression in an attempt to maintain power, and have ignored the Venezuelan people’s calls from for democratic accountability.”

The Biden administration also announced that it would extend protections given to roughly 600,000 Venezuelans living in the United States who have temporary protected status, a program that allows migrants from countries experiencing crisis to live and work legally in the United States.

Venezuelan migrants who apply can have their status extended another 18 months.

The United States on Friday announced new sanctions targeting Russia’s energy sector and its “shadow fleet” of oil tankers in what could be a final attempt by the Biden administration to cripple the Russian economy in response to Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

President Biden has been cautious in his approach to sanctions on Russia’s energy sector out of concern that shutting off its exports would send gasoline prices surging around the world. But U.S. officials said healthier global oil supplies and the easing of inflation presented an opportunity to exert more pressure on Russia’s oil industry as the war approaches its fourth year.

Despite a coordinated effort by Western allies to economically punish Moscow for its actions, the Russian economy has avoided the collapse that many economists predicted.

The moves from the Biden administration will put the onus on the Trump administration to decide whether to enforce the sanctions. Senior Biden administration officials demurred when asked if the sanctions were discussed with President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition team but said they expected the measures to provide the next administration with additional leverage over Russia to negotiate an end to the war.

“The United States is taking sweeping action against Russia’s key source of revenue for funding its brutal and illegal war against Ukraine,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in a statement. “With today’s sanctions, we are ratcheting up the sanctions risk associated with Russia’s oil trade, including shipping and financial facilitation in support of Russia’s oil exports.”

Oil prices jumped on Friday ahead of the announcement of the sanctions amid concerns that new restrictions, along with severe weather in the United States and wildfires California, could constrain global energy supplies.

The new sanctions target more than 180 vessels from Russia’s fleet of shadow tankers that Moscow has used to evade existing oil sanctions. They also blacklist two leading Russian oil producers, Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegas, and their subsidiaries.

The sanctions take aim at Russian liquefied natural gas projects, Russian energy officials and providers of services that support the country’s energy industry. And they limit some of the exceptions that have been in place to allow banks to continue facilitating Russian energy transactions.

U.S. sanctions can essentially cut a person or company off from the Western financial system.

The Biden administration said this will substantially undermine Russia’s oil revenues and cost the Russian economy billions of dollars per month. Senior officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s thinking, described the package of sanctions as the most significant to date on Russia’s energy sector.

Since the start of the war, Mr. Biden has wary of rattling global oil markets while inflation was soaring. In 2022, the Group of 7 nations created an oil “price cap” that was intended to limit how much revenue Russia could make from the oil it exports. Over time, the effectiveness of that strategy waned as Russia developed measures, such as its shadow fleet of aging tankers, to circumvent the sanctions.

However, with inflation under control and the presidential election over, the administration has been taking a more aggressive approach toward Russia in its final months.

In late November, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Russia’s Gazprombank, a major financial institution that is a conduit for Russian energy payments and the purchase of military equipment that Moscow uses in Ukraine.

Last month, the United States transferred $20 billion to Ukraine in the form of a loan that will be repaid using interest earned from Russia’s frozen central bank assets.

Although Russia’s economy has proved to be resilient, it remains under pressure.

High inflation has prompted the country’s central bank to raise benchmark interest rates to 21 percent. Economic growth is slowing, and shortages of products abound.

The Russian economy is expected to grow 1.3 percent next year, according to the International Monetary Fund, down from 3.6 percent in 2024. Russia’s annual inflation rate was nearly 10 percent in 2024, with the prices of many basic foodstuffs growing at double or triple that overall figure.

The national currency, the ruble, fell in November to its weakest level since the start of the war, reducing Russia’s purchasing power.

The effectiveness of the latest round of U.S. sanctions will ultimately be determined by the Trump administration, which will be responsible for enforcing them and could potentially roll them back.

Mr. Trump has indicated that he wants to broker a deal with Russia and Ukraine to end the war. While Mr. Trump used sanctions aggressively while in office, he expressed concerns during his campaign last year about the impact that sanctions could have on the dollar and its status as the world’s reserve currency.

“I use sanctions very powerfully against countries that deserve it, and then I take them off,” Mr. Trump said at the Economic Club of New York in September, adding, “I want to use sanctions as little as possible.”