Silence from the Trump administration on protections for immigrants from El Salvador has at least one Northern Virginia lawmaker breathing a sigh of relief.
A deadline to decide whether over 170,000 immigrants from El Salvador can remain protected from deportation passed this week without any public announcement. The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement saying it would make an announcement “at an appropriate time” and that Temporary Protected Status for El Salvador would stay in effect until then.
Del. Alfonso Lopez (D-3) took this as cause for at least some celebration.
“I am incredibly grateful that the decision has been made to maintain Temporary Protected Status (TPS) — and work eligibility — for citizens of El Salvador,” Lopez said in a press release today. “TPS was originally granted for them due to the after-effects of a violent civil war and natural disasters.”
The son of a formerly undocumented immigrant from Venezuela, Lopez has been outspoken on immigration issues during the second Trump administration. He successfully passed legislation this year to restrict federal immigration enforcement in Virginia, although some provisions were temporarily blocked by a federal judge late last month.
About 21,500 Salvadoran immigrants were estimated to reside in Virginia in 2015. The D.C. area in particular is a hub for the community, with about 34,000 Salvadorans residing across the region.
Despite Homeland Security’s statement, some attorneys are cautioning that the Trump administration could still eliminate Salvadoran immigrants’ protections without making a public statement, or announce a decision at any time.
“Let’s be clear: this is not an official extension or decision by DHS as to the fate of TPS for El Salvador,” Ben Johnson, who directs the American Immigration Lawyers Association, posted Wednesday on social media. The Trump administration is leaving TPS holders, their families and their employers in limbo, he said.
Living in limbo after all these years
The absence of an announcement has raised hopes that Salvadoran immigrants might be spared the fates of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from other countries whose protected status has ended during President Donald Trump’s second term. But the lack of clarity is also harrowing.
“Facing this uncertainty is frustrating and painful,” said Doris Landaverde, who was 21 when she crossed the U.S. border illegally in December 2000, seeking better job opportunities. A few months later, she obtained TPS status and has worked legally ever since, mostly cleaning at Harvard University, she said.
Now a 47-year-old single mother, Landaverde said she and her two U.S.-born daughters all consider this country home. The housing and healthcare of these American citizens depends on her income, and without TPS she could lose her job, she said.
“We have lived here legally for decades, and that is hard to erase,” she said. “I feel angry; we have done everything we were told to do legally.”
Will Trump make an exception for his ally?
El Salvador, once one of the most violent places in the world due to organized crime, has become one of the safest countries in the Americas since Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele cracked down on gang members in 2022.
While rights activists accuse Bukele’s government of widespread abuses, the country is notably safer than many other countries whose people have recently lost TPS protections.
Haiti is perhaps the clearest example, with U.S. deportation flights unable to land in Port-au-Prince because the capital city is largely controlled by gangs. More than half the population is estimated to need humanitarian assistance because of surging gang violence amid deepening poverty and hunger.
As a result, U.S. deportation flights land in the northern city of Cap-Haitien. The U.S. sent its fourth straight weekly deportation flight to Haiti on Thursday, according to Human Rights First’s ICE Flight Monitor.
But Trump has a far different relationship with Haiti’s deeply troubled leadership than he has with Bukele.
Bukele has supported Trump’s deportation campaign and his government was among the first to receive deportees, holding them in a mega prison known as CECOT. But mass deportations of his citizens could shock El Salvador’s economy. Salvadorans in the U.S. sent home $9.9 billion in remittances last year, representing 24% of El Salvador’s gross domestic product, its central bank said.
Trump and Bukele have met twice in D.C. since last April. In 2019, during the first Trump administration, Bukele asked Trump to extend TPS. Bukele has not said publicly if he has requested another extension.
More than 1 million people now subject to deportation
In Trump’s second term, Homeland Security has ended TPS for more than 1 million people from more than a dozen countries, including Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Syria. In addition to the Salvadorans, about 103,000 people, from Ukraine, Sudan and Lebanon, remain protected from deportation under TPS.
The Trump administration notched a major victory when the Supreme Court ruled in June that it acted within its authority by ending TPS for about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians.
Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar” who has advocated for ending TPS, said Tuesday that the El Salvador decision rests with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
“If it expires, it’s up to the secretary,” Homan said. “Temporary protected status means temporary. Let’s face it, El Salvador is a much safer country than it’s ever been now with a new president up there.”
Congress created temporary protections in 1990
TPS was created by Congress in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters or civil strife.
TPS allows people already in the country to remain, with work permits, for renewable periods if the homeland security secretary determines conditions are unsafe for their return. Federal rules say the status is automatically extended for six months if the secretary doesn’t make that determination at least 60 days before the designation expires. It is not clear, however, whether the determination has been made for El Salvador.
TPS was granted to El Salvador following two devastating 2001 earthquakes that left hundreds of thousands of people homeless. Just before leaving office, President Joe Biden extended it for El Salvador for 18 months, expiring Sept. 9, 2026.
