Scores of immigrants from El Salvador who have been shielded from deportation for decades because of ongoing violence and natural disasters in their homeland could now face removal from the United States after their benefits expire Wednesday.
Salvadorans were the first immigrant group granted temporary protected status (TPS), initially in 1990 to those fleeing the country’s civil war, and again in 2001 after two massive earthquakes. Proponents of extending TPS for Salvadorans say ending it would upend the lives of people who now have roots in the U.S., and that it remains dangerous for many to return.
But the Department of Homeland Security has been canceling TPS for immigrants from countries experiencing war and disaster since President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year. Trump officials argue that conditions in many of those nations have improved and that allowing the immigrants to remain runs counter to U.S. interests.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is required to make a decision on whether to extend TPS for any given group at least 60 days before the expiration. DHS has not revealed whether he has done so for Salvadorans, saying only: “An announcement will be made at an appropriate time.” If no designation is made, the status would automatically be extended for six months.
In the meantime, Salvadorans have been kept in limbo, wondering if Wednesday’s expiration date will mark the beginning of the end of their protections in the U.S. There are some 232,000 Salvadorans with TPS, many of whom work in construction and manufacturing.
Gaby Martinez, 28, left El Salvador and came to the U.S. at the age of 4 with her family and was able to remain legally under TPS. She obtained permanent residence through marriage last year and works in a dental office in Maryland. She has relatives who still depend on TPS and worries what will happen to them.
“It is pretty much next to impossible to fix your status unless you are able to find an appropriate sponsor through a spouse or an employer,” she said. “If there was a way for TPS holders to be able to adjust their status and apply for residency, they would have done so a very long time ago.”
The Trump administration has moved to eliminate protections for the vast majority of the estimated 1.3 million immigrants with TPS as part of the president’s broader clampdown on legal and illegal immigration. The Supreme Court recently ruled that the courts did not have the authority to review TPS cancellations for Haiti and Syria, paving a legal pathway to support other terminations.
TPS ended for 350,000 Haitians in August. In the month since, many have been called for check-ins at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices, where they have been outfitted with ankle monitors to track their whereabouts. The administration has also begun deporting some of them back to Haiti.
Trump officials had already canceled the benefit for many others, including immigrants from Afghanistan. Critics say the decisions were motivated by anti-immigrant sentiment and note that the State Department and international organizations have issued alerts warning against travel to several of the nations where immigrants may be deported to because they remain mired in violence.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, a close Trump ally, has promoted the image of his nation as a beacon of stability in the region, saying his heavy-handed policing and mass incarceration campaign have made it the “safest country in the Western Hemisphere.” Human rights advocates, however, say Bukele’s strongman approach has eroded rule of law and given rise to a state that arbitrarily imprisons people and routinely violates due process rights.
Eighty Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Mullin in July that cited human rights abuses by Bukele’s government and ongoing gang violence as reasons to extend TPS for Salvadorans. Bukele suspended constitutional rights in 2022, which the lawmakers said allows for “forced disappearances” with little to no accountability.
“Termination of TPS for El Salvador would send these well settled community members to a country beset by documented state-sponsored human rights abuses which does not have the means or capacity to support a diaspora of tens of thousands of people,” the lawmakers wrote.
Jessica Bansal, an attorney focused on TPS litigation with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said that terminating TPS for Salvadorans would be particularly painful because many have spent upward of 25 years in the U.S. raising families and building careers.
“There’s a lot of this population that’s actually in their 50s and 60s, that have children and grandchildren,” she said. “In El Salvador, for folks of that age, there are really very little prospects right now.”
An analysis released in July by the advocacy groups FWD.us and the National TPS Alliance found that TPS enrollees from El Salvador are largely concentrated in California, Texas, Maryland, New York and Virginia. The analysis, based on census data, found that they tended to work in construction, buildings and grounds, transportation, manufacturing, and food services.
TPS is granted for periods of six to 18 months but can be renewed. In the case of El Salvador, extensions have been granted for two decades.
“These are folks who pay taxes, renew their status every year, and contribute to our economy and our country,” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) said at a news conference last week. “The Trump administration, unfortunately, has demonstrated that it doesn’t care.”
Bukele in the past has pushed for Salvadorans in the U.S. to maintain their protections or be granted a more permanent status, but he has not addressed the issue recently. The end of TPS could deal a blow to El Salvador’s economy if immigrants in the U.S. are deported or unable to work legally.
Salvadoran immigrants in the U.S. sent $9.2 billion back as remittances in 2025 — a quarter of El Salvador’s gross domestic product, according to the country’s central bank.
Bukele has cooperated closely with the Trump administration on immigration and security issues. He played a prominent role in Trump’s move to bypass U.S. legal processes and deport 238 Venezuelan men in March 2025 to El Salvador, where they were transferred to the Terrorism Confinement Center, commonly known by its Spanish acronym CECOT. The three planes that carried the Venezuelans to El Salvador also included some Salvadorans, most notably Kilmar Abrego García, who was deported to El Salvador erroneously and later returned to the U.S.
The Venezuelans were released to Venezuela in July 2025 as part of a prisoner swap. In interviews, they provided a detailed portrait of life inside the prison, including beatings and lack of medical care.
Several other groups are also at risk of losing TPS. Protections for nationals of Ukraine and Sudan will expire in mid-October.
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