Temporary Protected Status
The New York Times claims that President Trump is pressuring immigrants with “legal status” to leave, including those with “Temporary Protected Status.”
IN FACT, Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is supposed to provide a “temporary” reprieve from deportation for extraordinary circumstances, but it has been routinely exploited to allow immigrants to stay in the U.S. indefinitely. Here are the specifics:
- In 1990, Congress passed and President George H. Bush signed a law that allows the Attorney General — who is under the authority of the President — to grant “temporary protected status and work authorization” to “aliens” who are already in the U.S. if their homelands are under duress.
- Per the law, the Attorney General can grant or extend such status for up to 18 months when there is an “armed conflict” that “would pose a serious threat” to “personal safety,” or an “earthquake, flood, drought, epidemic, or other environmental disaster,” or “extraordinary and temporary conditions” that “prevent aliens” from “returning” to their homelands “in safety.”
- As explained by a federal appeals court, “TPS essentially freezes an alien’s position within the immigration system,” but “it does not erase the effects of an alien’s previous unlawful entry or presence in the country.” Thus, they can be removed as soon as the designation is terminated.
- The law allows the Attorney General to “terminate the designation” with 60 days’ notice if he or she determines that the foreign nation “no longer continues to meet the conditions” that led to the original decision.
- The first TPS designation was given in 1990 to aliens from El Salvador for 18 months due to civil unrest, and another El Salvador designation was given in 2001 due to “two major earthquakes.”
- TPS extensions and other executive actions by the administrations of George H. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama allowed aliens from El Salvador to stay in the U.S. for decades.
- In 2018, the first Trump administration “terminated TPS for El Salvador —whose almost 200,000 nationals accounted for about 60% of all TPS recipients at the time.”
- When the Trump administration terminated TPS for El Salvador, it gave the aliens 18 months’ notice — or six times the legally required 60 days — “to arrange for their departure or to seek an alternative lawful immigration status in the United States, if eligible.”
- Even though the law explicitly states that “there is no judicial review of any determination of the Attorney General” about a TPS “termination,” an Obama-appointed judge ordered an injunction against it, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals prevented its implementation until Joe Biden became president and rescinded Trump’s decision.
- In his last month in office, Biden “extended El Salvador’s TPS for another 18 months, through September 9, 2026.”
- The New York Times opened its recent article about this issue by highlighting a TPS recipient from El Salvador who has had a “valid Social Security number and permission to work in the United States” for “nearly three decades.”
- Per the Times, the immigrant was fired from her cleaning job at Boston Logan International Airport because the Trump administration “decided that only U.S. citizens, green card holders and others with more permanent forms of residency should be granted access” to the secure areas of airports, as part of “Trump’s hard-line strategy to make the United States less welcoming to those from other countries.”
- As of March 31, 2025, 17 countries “were designated for TPS,” and 1,297,635 aliens were “protected by TPS.”
- While protected, TPS recipients can work, collect Social Security, receive public assistance in states that don’t ban it, receive free medical care in emergency rooms and for childbirths, have children who receive birthright citizenship, and become eligible for amnesty and full citizenship if the Democratic Party Platform is enacted.
