The American Immigration Council is a non-profit, non-partisan organization. In 2001, more than 200,000 Salvadorans were granted Temporary Protected Status by the Bush administration after a devastating earthquake hit El Salvador. For more than 25 years, this population of Salvadorans has lived and worked legally in the United States, passing a background check every 18 months to renew their status and becoming deeply rooted in American communities. Despite the fact that they are now some of the most-vetted immigrants in the entire nation, most have no path to obtaining permanent status without Congress acting. Now, the fate of the roughly 170,000 Salvadorans who still have TPS remains in limbo.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has terminated almost every single TPS designation which has come up for review, “delegalizing” more than 1 million people. This has meant losing work authorization and facing the risk of arrest and deportation. With the most recent grant of TPS for Salvador set to expire on September 9, many people expected that it would face the same fate. Instead, the Trump administration took the unusual step of declining to either extend or terminate the status.
On the day TPS was set to expire, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services posted a single, vague message on its website: “ALERT: 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 including work authorization.” No further explanation was provided.
This statement is particularly confusing given the process Congress created for TPS. Under the law, “at least 60 days” before a TPS designation is set to expire, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must review the conditions in the foreign country and determine whether to renew or terminate TPS. Once that decision is made, by law, the secretary must publish a formal notice of the decision “on a timely basis.” If the decision is to terminate, then the termination cannot take place less than 60 days after the formal notice is posted. If the DHS secretary doesn’t make a decision at all, then TPS is supposed to be extended for a minimum of six months.
However, with the September 9 expiration date for TPS for El Salvador come and gone, the Trump administration has done almost none of this. It has not said whether a decision was made “at least 60 days” in advance (that is, before July 11). It has not published any formal notice terminating TPS for El Salvador. And it has not posted a notice saying that DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin failed to make a decision in time (thus automatically extending the status), as happened in May with TPS for Lebanon.
That leaves Salvadoran TPS holders with no certainty of whether they have authority to work lawfully, or whether they face an imminent risk of deportation. No one, other than Trump administration officials, knows whether TPS has already been terminated or not. If Secretary Mullin failed to make a decision before July 11, then TPS should have automatically been extended for six months. But if Secretary Mullin made the decision to terminate and then DHS failed to tell anyone, then there would be no automatic extension.
This uncertain situation has left 170,000 people with a sword of Damocles over their heads, their lives and livelihoods hanging by a thread. Despite DHS’s brief statement (posted only on a webpage) that TPS holders “retain” their work authorization, no official notice has been provided and work permits for El Salvador TPS holders appear to be expired on their face. This has caused employers to already fire some Salvadorans with TPS, not wanting to risk violating employment law.
For now, Salvadorans with TPS may be breathing a temporary sigh of relief at the prospect of a short reprieve. But the administration could terminate this protection at any moment, , plunging 170,000 people into a situation where they may be forced to leave a country which they lived in for a minimum of a quarter century. And even if the administration is violating the law right now, a recent Supreme Court decision held that federal judges have virtually no power to step in and force it to follow the law.
This is a callous and reckless way to treat a population which has been contributing to the United States for over 25 years with reliance on a legal protection that administrations of both political parties have supported. The Trump administration’s latest moves show why it’s long past time for Congress to step in and provide a path to permanent legal status for people who have been here for generations living, raising families, and contributing. Enough is enough. Time to act.
