DHS extends TPS for Salvadorans, potentially complicating Trump's plans

The Biden administration on Friday extended a key humanitarian program for El Salvadoran nationals in a move that could complicate the incoming Trump administration’s plans to do away with long-term immigrant protections.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) extended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for nationals of El Salvador until Sept. 9, 2026, allowing the program’s beneficiaries to start re-registering for the 18-month period that begins on March 10 of this year.

Under TPS, nationals of designated countries are allowed to live and work in the United States. Countries are designated by DHS under advisement by the State Department based on whether conditions on the ground allow for safe repatriations.

But the TPS program has come under criticism from groups who want to reduce immigration because many designations — El Salvador’s in particular — have been summarily extended for decades.

According to DHS, the current extension is warranted because of storms in 2023 and 2024 that affected areas of El Salvador that were ravaged by earthquakes in 2001, the original cause of the TPS designation that was extended Friday. El Salvador’s first TPS designation, the first designation since the program was enacted to law, came in 1990 amid the country’s civil war.

Nationals of El Salvador who have been continuously living in the United States since before February 13, 2001 are eligible for TPS. According to DHS, there are approximately 234,000 existing beneficiaries who are eligible to re-register.

TPS beneficiaries receive Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) to allow them to legally work in the United States. Existing EADs for re-registering El Salvadoran beneficiaries will be valid through March 9, 2026 to avoid gaps in employment if new EADs are not delivered before then.

According to the National Immigration Forum, there are about 860,000 foreign nationals protected by TPS, including about 180,000 El Salvadorans.

If TPS designations are allowed to expire, most of the program’s beneficiaries are likely to become functionally undocumented or pushed to seek out other immigration benefits, such as asylum, with fewer protections.

For long-term TPS holders like El Salvadorans, that could mean being forced to abandon homes, families and long-standing businesses.

The Biden administration has expanded TPS, protecting hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan and Haitian nationals from repatriations to their home countries.

During the first Trump administration, DHS sought to cull TPS designations by attrition, allowing designations to expire.

Immigrant advocates have been pushing the Biden administration to issue extensions like Friday’s and re-designations in certain cases to give immigrant communities the greatest possible protections ahead of the Trump administration’s mass deportation plans.

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