Trump has ended TPS for 13 countries. Salvadorans are still waiting for an answer.
Por Myah Ward and Eric Bazail-Eimil — POLITICO – TOP Stories
The Trump administration’s unusual silence on the future of temporary legal status for people from El Salvador has plunged an immigrant community of around 200,000 people into limbo, leaving them uncertain when, or if, they will be allowed to stay in the U.S.
The White House has terminated temporary protected status for immigrants from 13 out of 17 countries that had the designation — part of the broader effort to curtail a program immigration hawks argue has long been abused.
But it’s been a week since the expiration date for Salvadorans came and went with neither an extension nor a termination, nor any indication of when an announcement might come. Since then, people from the Central American country have been anxiously awaiting the Federal Register regulatory website to update, employers are uncertain whether they need to find new employees and immigration hardliners are questioning the delay.
“It’s an obscenity, and people are really, really suffering — hitting refresh on the Federal Register. It really sucks,” said Chris Newman, general counsel for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and the National TPS Alliance. “They have routinely blown deadlines before, but I think they’re now in a category of more blown than previous decisions.”
The delay speaks to the particularly challenging circumstances facing the Trump administration’s decision on El Salvador: An extension would anger hardliners already peeved with an administration they feel has gone soft on deportations, while a termination could complicate the president’s relationship with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, a close Trump ally who has pushed the U.S. to keep the protections.
Mark Krikorian, who leads the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank in Washington that favors restrictions on legal immigration and greater immigration enforcement, called the administration’s silence especially glaring given the aggressive pace at which DHS has revoked other TPS designations since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025.
“It’s not a good look to have made a big deal to be ending Haitian TPS, but pulling your punch on Salvadoran TPS,” he said.
Some immigration hardliners have speculated that the delay may be linked to lobbying by El Salvador. Bukele met with the president in July, and a TPS termination could spell doom for the country’s economy: Salvadoran immigrants, who are heavily concentrated in Los Angeles and the Washington area, sent $9.2 billion back as remittances last year, making up a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product, according to El Salvador’s central bank.
“I’m thinking maybe this came from El Salvador,” said a person close to the White House granted anonymity to speak about internal discussions, who believes the protections should be terminated, citing the State Department’s travel advisory, which is at a level one, its safest rating. “It’s one of the countries that it would be hard to argue with the current shape that El Salvador is in — it would be hard to say, yeah, they still need TPS.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. DHS sent POLITICO a similar statement to the one posted on the USCIS website: “An announcement on El Salvador’s TPS will be made at the appropriate time. Until such announcement is made, Salvadoran individuals present in the U.S. under TPS retain protection.”
The TPS designation, created by Congress in 1990, has been used by Democratic and Republican administrations to grant temporary relief to people due to crises in their home countries. Salvadorans were the first group to be granted the status during the country’s civil war in 1990, and many received the protections again after massive earthquakes in 2001. That status was extended across administrations owing to continued instability in the country due to once-widespread gang violence. At one point, El Salvador had among the highest homicide rates in the world.
The post-Sept. 9 reprieve for Salvadoran TPS holders, many who have lived in the U.S. under the consistently renewed status for 25 years, if not longer, has done little to ease anxieties. There’s been particular confusion among TPS holders around whether the Trump administration’s lack of announcement will result in an automatic six-month extension. But that extension is only triggered if an internal deadline is missed, so a termination could be published at any moment, said Jessica Bansal, TPS counsel at National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
“It’s incredibly stressful and confusing for people,” she said. “People have been fired. Employers are confused. It just feels like intentional chaos at this point, and it’s really disruptive of people’s ability to plan, for people to take care of their families, to work. It’s really disruptive for employers.”
This summer, the Supreme Court greenlit the administration’s efforts to end TPS, including for 350,000 Haitians — terminations that have already rippled through economic sectors, including in health care and construction. Business and labor groups are sounding the alarm that the uncertainty surrounding Salvadorans’ legal status is already impacting local economies, including in D.C., Virginia and Maryland, where more than 40,000 TPS holders live.
Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-Va.) said that an asphalt business in his district let employees go amid the legal uncertainty.
“I spend a lot of time on I-95. That is absolutely critical work. Those are essential workers,” Vindman said at a press conference Tuesday. “Our friends and neighbors are living in fear, uncertain of what will come next now that TPS has expired and this administration has thrown them and their families into limbo.”
Carlos Raba, the chef at the restaurant Clavel in Baltimore, echoed Vindman’s concerns, saying without immigrant workers, “our restaurants, hospitality business, simply could not operate the way that they do right now.”
Fonte: POLITICO – TOP Stories