The American Immigration Council does not endorse or oppose candidates for elected office. We aim to provide analysis regarding the implications of the election on the U.S. immigration system.
On October 17, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that Secretary Mayorkas was designating the country of Lebanon for Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Through this designation, DHS expects that as many as 11,000 Lebanese individuals currently in the country will be eligible to apply for a potentially renewable 18-month protection to remain in the country. These 11,000 people will join a growing population of people from 16 other countries who are protected by TPS. As of March 31, 2024, this was over 863,000 people.
This population of people in “twilight status” is increasingly vulnerable to the whims of the executive branch, as DHS can revoke or allow expiration of any TPS grant . As of today, there are 13 TPS designations set to expire in 2025 without further action by the DHS secretary, and, including Lebanon, four will expire in 2026. As a result, whoever wins the presidential election will be the one to decide whether hundreds of thousands of people can continue to live and work legally — or lose their status and risk deportation.
What is Temporary Protected Status?
TPS is a legal protection created in the Immigration Act of 1990 as a response to the then-ongoing civil war in El Salvador. After reports emerged of extensive human rights abuses inside El Salvador and the torture and execution of people deported from the United States, Congressman Joe Moakley of Massachusetts first introduced legislation in 1983 to establish a legal authority to halt deportations to countries undergoing serious humanitarian crises. These efforts eventually led to the creation of TPS in 1990, and El Salvador became the first country designated under the authority.
Under TPS, the DHS Secretary is authorized to temporarily protect from deportation any individual who comes from a country which is facing an ongoing armed conflict, environmental disaster, or any “extraordinary and temporary conditions.” DHS can designate a country for 6, 12, or 18 months of TPS at a time, but not longer.
If DHS grants TPS to a specific country, individuals from that country who are here in the U.S. as of the date of the designation may apply for TPS. They are required to pay an application fee and go through an extensive background check and are barred from TPS if they have committed certain crimes or pose a national security risk. People can apply for TPS if they are undocumented, or if they have another form of immigration status.
What benefits does TPS offer?
If approved for TPS, individuals are eligible to work legally in the country for as long as their grant of TPS lasts. They are also protected from deportation during that period, unless they commit an offense which violates the terms of TPS. People with TPS may apply for authorization to travel outside of the United States but cannot otherwise leave the country without risking the loss of status.
Who has TPS?
As of May 31, 2024, the most recent date for which data is available, 16 different countries were designated for TPS. For most of those countries, few people hold the status. Combined, fewer than 35,000 people from Afghanistan, Burma, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen held TPS status as of that date. Five countries made up the largest TPS population, with roughly 50,000 TPS beneficiaries from Ukraine, 54,000 from Honduras, 180,000 from El Salvador, 200,000 from Haiti, and 344,000 from Venezuela as of that date. These number are likely higher today following redesignations of TPS for Haiti, Yemen, and Somalia in July 2024, which combined is expected to lead to as many as 320,000 new TPS beneficiaries.
What happens when TPS expires?
Before the 6, 12, or 18 month-period of TPS expires, the DHS secretary generally has to make a decision; whether to extend the previous designation or let it expire. The secretary can also “redesignate” TPS, which would allow people who entered the country after the first designation date to become eligible to apply for TPS.
If DHS extends TPS without redesignating it, those individuals who currently have TPS can apply to renew their status, but any individual who entered after the initial designation will remain ineligible. If DHS allows TPS to expire, then people would lose their status and their work authorization and would either become undocumented or revert to a prior immigration status (if still valid). While the DHS Secretary can terminate TPS before it expires, this has never happened in the history of the program.
Since 1990, 12 TPS designations have been allowed to expire in total, for the countries of Angola, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Burundi, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kosovo, Kuwait, Lebanon, Liberia, Montserrat, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone.
During the Trump administration, DHS chose to allow TPS for El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Nepal, and Sudan to expire, arguing that the conditions which had justified their original designation were no longer valid. These expirations were temporarily blocked in court and remained so until President Biden took office and Secretary Mayorkas renewed each designation.
In 2025, the next president and DHS secretary will have only a few months in which to decide the fate of thousands of TPS-holders. TPS for El Salvador expires in March 2025, while TPS for Sudan, Ukraine, and Venezuela expire in April 2025. An additional six countries will lose TPS between May 2025 and July 2025 if not renewed or redesignated.
Thus, if a new administration chooses not to renew TPS for those countries, hundreds of thousands of people could lose their legal status and work authorization within a four-month period in 2025.
Can people with TPS obtain permanent legal status?
TPS provides no independent mechanism for beneficiaries to obtain permanent legal status. That means some individuals may remain here on TPS for years without ever finding a way to acquire lawful permanent resident status.
Given the extensive contributions of people with TPS to the United States and the economy, many people have called for a path to permanent legal status for those who have had TPS for a lengthy period, including over 180,000 Salvadoran TPS beneficiaries who have had the status for over 20 years. Without Congress acting, these individuals will be forced to live their lives in an 18-month limbo at a time, having paid thousands of dollars in application fees over the years and passed numerous backgrounds checks.
FILED UNDER: Department of Homeland Security