The Trump administration has not yet decided whether to let deportation protections lapse for Salvadoran nationals in the U.S., a departure from its recent moves to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 13 other countries.
On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said TPS would remain in effect for El Salvador, a nation led by Nayib Bukele, a close ally of President Trump who last year agreed to take in U.S. deportees in exchange for millions of dollars from the administration.
“An announcement on El Salvador’s TPS will be made at the appropriate time. Until such announcement is made, Salvadoran individuals present in the U.S. under TPS retain protection,” DHS said in a statement.
The department has not always announced its decisions on expiring TPS programs immediately, but it has aggressively fought in court to end the program, arguing that the temporary protections must be temporary. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled that courts could not review the administration’s decision, effectively allowing the termination of TPS for some 350,000 Haitians.
Besides El Salvador, only three other countries have TPS protections that will soon expire: Sudan, Ukraine, and Lebanon. TPS allows nationals from designated countries to remain in the U.S. if it is determined that unrest or natural disasters would make it unsafe to deport them.
Haiti appears to clearly meet the program’s criteria, as the U.S. currently does not allow commercial flights into the country because gangs routinely shoot at planes. The country has been under a transitional government since the 2021 assassination of its prime minister.
El Salvador shares characteristics with other countries the Trump administration has determined no longer qualify for TPS. The program for El Salvador was first established in 2001 after two massive earthquakes, and 170,000 people currently hold the protections. The Biden administration extended the protections just days before leaving office.
“While progress has been made in repairing physical damage caused by the 2001 earthquakes, subsequent environmental disasters, infrastructure challenges, continued climate risks, a weak macroeconomic environment, and food insecurity underscore that the country conditions underlying the original designation continue to significantly disrupt living conditions in El Salvador,” DHS wrote at the time.
The Trump administration has ended TPS for other countries in the same region that were also struck by natural disasters, including Nicaragua and Honduras, both designated after Hurricane Mitch in 1999. Bukele has been a top ally of President Trump, accepting both Salvadoran and Venezuelan deportees and holding them in one of the country’s most notorious megaprisons. He has also touted the security of an El Salvador previously marred by violence, a dynamic achieved after imprisoning tens of thousands of Salvadorans.
