Salvadoran TPS Deadline Passes Quietly, Raising Hopes of Extension
The deadline for a decision on Temporary Protected Status for about 200,000 Salvadorans passed without any public announcement, leaving advocates hopeful of a six-month extension.
A deadline for the Trump administration to decide the fate of legal protections for roughly 200,000 immigrants from El Salvador came and went this week without any public announcement, offering a measure of hope to a community that has watched similar protections end for more than a million people.
The Department of Homeland Security has not disclosed its plans. In a statement, the department said it would make an announcement "at an appropriate time" and that Temporary Protected Status for El Salvador would remain in effect until then. The silence left attorneys and advocates scrambling to interpret what might come next.
Under immigration law, temporary status is automatically extended for six months when the government takes no action. Some attorneys, however, cautioned that the administration could still act without a public statement, or announce a decision soon. The absence of any update on key Homeland Security websites or social media accounts by early Thursday added to the uncertainty.
TPS allows people already in the United States to remain, with work permits, for renewable periods of up to 18 months, provided the homeland security secretary determines that conditions in their home country are unsafe for return. Congress created the programme in 1990 to prevent deportations to nations suffering from natural disasters or civil strife. El Salvador received the designation after two devastating earthquakes in 2001 left hundreds of thousands homeless. Just before leaving office, President Joe Biden extended it for 18 months, to Sept. 9, 2026.
In Trump's second term, Homeland Security has ended TPS for more than 1 million people from over a dozen countries, including Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Syria. About 103,000 people from Ukraine, Sudan and Lebanon remain in the U.S. under the programme. In May, protections were automatically extended for six months for about 11,000 Lebanese. The administration secured a major victory in June when the Supreme Court ruled that it had acted within its authority in ending TPS for about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians.
Tom Homan, Trump's "border czar" and a longtime advocate of ending TPS, said the decision rests with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. "If it expires, it's up to the secretary," Homan said. "Temporary protected status means temporary. Let's face it, El Salvador is a much safer country than it's ever been now with a new president up there."
El Salvador, once among the most violent countries in the world, has become one of the safest in the Americas since Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele ordered mass arrests in 2022. Bukele has aligned himself with Trump's mass deportation policy and was among the first leaders to receive deportees, holding them in a mega prison known as CECOT. The two men have met twice in Washington since last April. Human rights groups have denounced mass and arbitrary arrests, torture and disappearances in the country's prison system.
Salvadorans in the U.S. sent $9.9 billion in remittances home last year, equal to 24% of El Salvador's gross domestic product, according to the country's central bank. In 2019, during the first Trump administration, Bukele asked Trump to extend TPS. He has not said publicly whether he has requested another extension.