The Trump administration said Wednesday morning that it would not move to cancel temporary humanitarian protections for more than 170,000 Salvadorans, for now, preserving their ability to live legally in the United States and shielding them from deportation.
Temporary Protected Status, or T.P.S., allows foreign nationals from troubled nations to live and work legally in the United States and was set to expire for El Salvador on Wednesday. But the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that an announcement regarding the Salvadorans’ status would come “at the appropriate time” and that until then, “Salvadoran individuals present in the U.S. under T.P.S. retain protection.”
The department did not provide more information on the timing of the announcement. The administration has at times waited several days after the program’s expiration to publicize its decision.
The move stands in stark contrast to how the Trump administration has treated the roughly 350,000 Haitians whose protections expired in July. Hundreds have been deported in recent weeks, and federal officials have targeted Haitian communities in the United States with an aggressive electronic ankle monitoring campaign. Administration officials and Homeland Security’s social media accounts have churned out celebratory videos of Haitians being put on deportation flights.
The administration’s push to remove those Haitians comes even as the State Department warns travelers not to visit Haiti for any reason because of crime and other threats. The department’s travel advisory for El Salvador, meanwhile, suggests exercising normal precautions.
The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has positioned himself as a willing White House ally central to the Trump administration’s efforts to accelerate deportations. In the spring of 2025, he helped detain more than 200 migrants deported from the United States to his country in a maximum-security prison. Experts have told The New York Times that Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans earns Mr. Bukele political points at home, where remittances from U.S.-based family members are critical to the economy.
Still, many Salvadorans say they no longer feel safe staying with expired documentation as Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps across the country continue to entangle immigrants with and without legal residency.
In recent days, dozens of Latino evangelical leaders, T.P.S. holders and immigrant rights supporters have petitioned lawmakers in Washington calling for long-term protections. Some Salvadorans have begun packing, buying flights and preparing to self-deport.
“For families from El Salvador, it is a very difficult moment,” said José Palma, a Salvadoran T.P.S. holder and spokesman for the National TPS Alliance, an organization focused on defending the program. Many have lived in the United States for the past 25 years, he added, and many have established deep roots. They own cars, homes and mortgages. They have U.S.-born children in high school or heading off to college.
“We are seeing families struggling to stay stable,” he said, citing his own uncertain fate.
Agustín Quiles, who heads Mission Talk, an advocacy organization for Latino evangelicals that gathered this week in Washington, said the pastors in his network report that their members are afraid to go to school, work and church.
“There is a lot of pain, a lot of suffering,” Mr. Quiles said.
The Trump administration has already paused or terminated T.P.S. for 13 of the 17 countries once covered. The Supreme Court ruled in June that the administration could end the program for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians.
With less than two months before the midterm elections, aggressive immigration tactics have emerged as a thorny issue for Republicans. Images of people being rounded up at airports and from their cars have prompted pushback, even as members of President Trump’s base have called for more heavy-handed tactics.
El Salvador was the first country designated under the T.P.S. program after Congress created it with bipartisan support and President George H.W. Bush signed it into law in 1990. The status provides safe haven for people from foreign nations engulfed in armed conflict, natural disasters and crises, and the government can renew it up to 18 months at a time.
Critics, including Mr. Trump, say the program was intended to provide only short-term relief. Immigrant rights and refugee aid organizations counter that the status has become one of the few paths to safety within an outdated and overburdened U.S. immigration system that Congress has failed to overhaul.
Daysi González, 31, a Democratic political operative and partner with Solidarity Strategies, a progressive consulting firm, has lived in the United States since she arrived in California from her native El Salvador for Christmas in 2000. She and her family entered the country on tourist visas but applied for T.P.S. after their home country was hit by powerful earthquakes that winter. She ended up staying for decades.
Ms. González said she would have applied for longer-term residency if she had been able to, but the program does not provide a legal pathway to lawful permanent resident status.
Now, she has been posting videos on social media chronicling what could be her final days in the United States. On Tuesday, she was searching for flights and waiting to hear back from her employer on whether she could keep her job.
“Without confirmation that I can legally work, that I can renew my license — living here will just be too dangerous,” she said.
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