WASHINGTON — Temporary protected status for 170,000 Salvadorans is set to expire at midnight Wednesday, but the Department of Homeland Security said protections will remain in place until the Trump administration makes a decision to extend or terminate El Salvador’s designation, in place since 2001.
“An announcement on El Salvador’s TPS will be made at the appropriate time,” a DHS spokesperson said in an email to States Newsroom. “Until such announcement is made, Salvadoran individuals present in the U.S. under TPS retain protection.”
Based on the temporary protected status statute, if a determination to extend or terminate a country’s protections is not made by the government by the expiration of the deadline, then TPS is automatically extended for six months.
If the Trump administration does make a determination to end protections, then Salvadorans will have 60 days to leave the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has not indicated his plans for El Salvador’s temporary legal protections. Additionally, there is no notice in Wednesday’s Federal Register or a preview of Thursday’s edition regarding TPS for El Salvador.
On Tuesday, White House border czar Tom Homan said the decision would be up to Mullin, but added that El Salvador is now much safer than when its previous designation was made in 2001.
If TPS is terminated for nationals for El Salvador, they will be the latest large group of immigrants to lose their legal status in the country as President Donald Trump has sought to dismantle the program Congress created for people who hail from countries deemed too dangerous for return.
The Supreme Court has accelerated that move. The court’s conservative majority this summer determined that the TPS statute does not allow decisions on country designations, terminations and extensions to be subject to judicial review.
Before the start of the second Trump administration, 17 countries had TPS, totaling to about 1.3 million immigrants with legal status.
Now, if TPS for El Salvador ends, only three countries will remain: Lebanon, Sudan and Ukraine.
TPS is granted to nationals who hail from a country experiencing a natural disaster, violence, or other extreme circumstances, allowing them to remain in the U.S. and obtain work permits that last for six-to-18-month cycles.
Each renewal process requires a TPS holder to go through a background check and pay hundreds of dollars in fees as well as undergo other vetting.
If TPS ends for El Salvador, it could stymie the country’s economy, where more than a quarter of its gross domestic product relies on money sent back to the country from Salvadorans in the U.S., known as remittances.
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, also has a close relationship with the Trump administration, ranging from accepting deportees that are not Salvadoran into his country to visiting the president at the White House.
In 2019, Bukele asked the first Trump administration to extend TPS protections, not because El Salvador was unsafe, but because the end of designation would break apart families in the U.S.
Bukele has not made any recent public calls for the Trump administration to continue TPS for Salvadorans.
