Ukrainians living in Nebraska and supporters gathered at an event earlier this year marking the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. (Cindy Gonzalez/Nebraska Examiner)
WASHINGTON — Immigrants living in the United States with humanitarian status from Ukraine and Sudan will retain their deportation protections and work authorizations for now, the Department of Homeland Security said over the weekend.
More than 100,000 Ukrainians and roughly 2,000 Sudanese with Temporary Protected Status will keep their protections until “such an announcement is made,” the agency said.
It’s the same move the Trump administration made as the deadline for TPS renewal for more than 200,000 Salvadorans approached last month.
While immigrants with TPS from El Salvador, Sudan and Ukraine will have deportation protections, it places more than 300,000 people in limbo because it’s not clear how long the protections will last.
“Families who depend on this status to stay safe and keep working deserve a formal decision in writing, not a weekend statement to press,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, which helps resettle refugees and advocates for immigrants, said in a statement. “Keeping protections in place is the right call, but a promise to a reporter is not a policy.”
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has not indicated if DHS will renew protections for those TPS recipients who were granted the designation because they hail from countries deemed too dangerous for return.
Ukrainians received TPS in 2022 after Russia invaded their country and Sudanese were granted the designation several times, most recently in 2022, because of an ongoing civil war. The State Department currently has a do-not-travel advisory, its highest advisory level, for Ukraine and Sudan.
If no decision is made, an automatic six-month extension kicks in, based on the TPS statute. But DHS has not confirmed whether any such extension is in place for Salvadorians, Sudanese or Ukrainians.
After Monday, the last remaining country with TPS will be Lebanon, which is set to expire Nov. 27.
The second Trump administration has moved to wind down the TPS program established by Congress in the 1990s. The Supreme Court cleared the way for that initiative after it ruled this summer that decisions from the executive branch regarding a TPS designation are not subject to judicial review.
Supporters of Ukraine gather outside the Nebraska State Capitol on Feb. 28, 2026, the fourth anniversary of the country's war with Russia. (Photo by Zach Wendling/Nebraska Examiner)
WASHINGTON — More than 100,000 Ukrainians and roughly 2,000 Sudanese immigrants are bracing for the possibility they’ll lose their humanitarian protections by Monday.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has not indicated if he will renew protections for Ukrainians, who first received Temporary Protected Status after Russia invaded their country in 2022, and for Sudanese nationals, who were granted the designation several times, most recently in 2022, because of an ongoing civil war.
The Trump administration has moved to eliminate legal protections for more than 1 million immigrants that have TPS. Of the 17 countries with the designation at the start of the second Trump administration, the only remaining protections are for Ukraine and Sudan, which are set to end on Monday, and Lebanon, which is set to expire Nov. 27.
Mullin is supposed to declare his decision at least 60 days before a TPS designation expires, but he’s made no announcement.
The lack of an announcement would put Ukrainian and Sudanese TPS holders in the same situation as 200,000 Salvadorians, who are still in limbo after DHS did not renew protections set to expire on Sept. 9.
If no decision is made, an automatic six-month extension kicks in. DHS has not confirmed whether the extension is in place, only that Salvadorians have deportation protections and work authorization, for now.
DHS did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment about TPS extension for Ukraine or Sudan.
Situation unchanged
TPS is granted when a person hails from a country deemed too dangerous to return to because of conflict, natural disaster or another destabilizing event. The Trump administration has sought to wind the program down, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court this summer determined that decisions by the executive branch regarding TPS designations could not be challenged in court.
Immigration advocates say the rationale for providing TPS to Ukrainians has not changed.
“With the war in Ukraine still ongoing and conditions remaining unsafe, the administration should extend TPS for Ukrainians,” Jennie Murray, president and CEO of the advocacy group National Immigration Forum, said in a statement. “Forcing people to return to Ukraine in these circumstances is dangerous and a departure from longstanding U.S. policy.”
If Mullin ends TPS for Ukraine, it wouldn’t be the first time Ukrainians have lost humanitarian protections under the second Trump administration.
Last year, the Trump administration moved to end new applicants for a humanitarian program created by the Biden administration that allowed more than 220,000 Ukrainians to enter the U.S.
The State Department has a do-not-travel advisory, its highest advisory level, for Ukraine and Sudan.
Trump-Zelenskyy tensions
Fraught relations between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy further complicate the issue as Monday’s deadline approaches.
Trump has grown frustrated with the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, and has blamed Ukraine for a spike in oil prices, ignoring the effect of his war in Iran.
On Oct. 9, Trump moved to ease sanctions on Russian diesel exports. Zelenskyy called the decision “a weak decision by strong partners,” according to The Associated Press.
In an interview with NPR, Zelenskyy said the Trump administration said unless Ukraine stops long-range drone strikes on oil refineries in Russia, it could cut off U.S. intelligence-sharing with Ukraine.
The two leaders have clashed in the past.
In February 2025, during a visit to the White House, the president got into a heated exchange with Zelenskyy, appearing to break with Ukraine and its resistance to Russia’s invasion.
Trump’s relationship with Ukraine was also the center of his first impeachment, after a U.S. House inquiry found the president threatened to withhold military aid unless Ukraine investigated his political opponent at the time, Joe Biden.
The U.S. Senate acquitted Trump in an impeachment trial.
Lawmakers push for extensions
There is a bipartisan congressional push to extend protections for Ukrainians at least until the end of 2029.
In a letter to Mullin and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 31 senators urged for Ukrainians to be granted an 18-month extension, the longest renewal for TPS holders.
“The ongoing war has caused a humanitarian crisis and damage to critical civilian infrastructure that has left many with limited or no access to heat, electricity or medical services,” the senators wrote. “Ukrainian nationals cannot safely return at this time, and allowing TPS to terminate on October 19, 2026, would risk sending more than one hundred thousand individuals back to an active war zone.”
The Republicans who signed the letter were Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
The Democratic senators who signed the letter were Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, Michael Bennet of Colorado, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Chris Coons of Delaware, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Andy Kim of New Jersey, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Patty Murray of Washington, Gary Peters of Michigan, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Adam Schiff of California, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Tina Smith of Minnesota, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Mark Warner of Virginia, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Peter Welch of Vermont, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois.
Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with Democrats, also signed the letter.
A handful of Democratic senators also urged Mullin to extend TPS protections for Sudanese in an Aug. 17 letter.
“The ongoing armed conflict, catastrophic humanitarian crisis, and widespread human rights abuses make the safe return of Sudanese nationals impossible at this time,” they wrote. “TPS for Sudanese nationals in the United States remains both a humanitarian necessity and a prudent policy to ensure that individuals are not forced to return to conditions that continue to threaten their safety and well-being.”
Those senators were Warner, Kaine, Schiff, Van Hollen, Warnock, Booker, Bennet and Duckworth.
A young caregiver conducts a quick health exam on her patient. The federal immigration crackdown is harming the senior healthcare workforce in Wisconsin, industry leaders say. | Getty Images creative
Americans are getting older. In 2025, nearly 19% of the U.S. population was over 65, and the majority of them will need long-term care.
Some home health agencies and nursing homes in Wisconsin have had to give up on plans started years ago to hire overseas workers after President Donald Trump’s administration suspended nearly all refugee programs. The administration also terminated Temporary Protected Status for people from 13 countries, which industry leaders say is weakening an already struggling workforce that helps care for the nation’s older adults and disabled population.
“We have basically cut off or severely limited every pipeline that we have for bringing in, for welcoming foreign-born workers, many of whom end up working in our sector in aging services. … We don’t have a sort of ready supply of U.S.-born individuals who are clamoring to work in aging services, and that’s not a new issue,” said LeadingAge CEO Katie Smith Sloan.
The workforce issue affects member agencies of LeadingAge, a national network of nonprofit nursing homes, home health and other organizations that serve older adults. Sloan said when long-term care facilities have to turn people away, that puts extra burdens on hospitals and family members to fill care gaps.
“We’re seeing home health agencies just not able to take new clients. We’ve seen nursing homes that have closed beds and closed wings,” Sloan said.
According to KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization, 30% of all direct care workers nationwide are immigrants. These workers include nursing assistants, personal care aides and home health aides who provide people with disabilities and older adults assistance with daily living or medical care.
Long-term care is important for people like Myranda Gereau, who lives in Sheboygan. She is quadriplegic, has a tracheostomy and needs 24/7 care. At 30 years old, she’s struggled for years to find nurses to provide in-home care, constantly worrying about her nurses’ schedule and whether she will be able to continue living independently.
“This is literally my life we’re talking about,” Gereau said. “This isn’t ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I can’t come in. I have to take off.’ That’s not how health care works. There are people’s lives that are needing care, and then when you take that caregiver out of the equation, those people suffer.”
Robin Wolzenburg is the current director of operations at Koru Health, which operates multiple senior living communities across Wisconsin. In her previous role at LeadingAge Wisconsin, she worked with resettlement agencies to place refugees in nursing home positions.
Wolzenburg’s efforts stopped in January 2025 when the Trump administration suspended refugee programs. Officials implemented the policy change because the U.S. was not able to support new refugees without “compromis(ing) the availability of resources for Americans,” according to a White House statement.
“We saw just a marked halt in refugees coming in. It didn’t seem like it was a trickle – it just seemed like it stopped,” Wolzenburg said.
Staffing issues for long-term care are so severe that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle want to make it easier for immigrants to get long-term care jobs. State Sen. Jesse James, R-Thorp; Rep. Joel Kitchens, R-Sturgeon Bay; and Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez, D-Milwaukee, co-authored legislation that passed in April allowing DACA recipients to obtain professional licenses in nursing and other fields.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects home health aide jobs to grow by 847,000 over the next 10 years — the most of any job sector in the country. However, the median salary for home health and personal care aides was $35,800 in 2025, making it hard to attract workers.
“We don’t have domestic workers. I mean, we just don’t,” Wolzenburg said. “The market is so tight, and the competition is so tight, and caregiving is a tough job, it really is. You’re caring for the most vulnerable people in our population.”
For organizations that provide long-term care, not having enough workers means more people aren’t able to continue living at home or have to find care in a community even farther away. Wolzenburg said many assisted living facilities have had to limit admissions.
“You have a resident or an elderly person who is looking to come and reside in their own community, where they’ve maybe been in for the last 50, 60 years of their life, maybe longer,” Wolzenburg said. “That assisted living or nursing home in that community may or may not be able to meet their needs because they don’t have enough staff.”
Recruiting overseas workers is simply a smart business strategy, Wolzenburg said, and a necessary one.
“Obviously we want to support newcomers no matter what, but we also don’t have the domestic staff and the luxury of not engaging this population,” Wolzenburg said.
Multi-year hiring strategies overturned
Kate Battiato, vice president of media and community impact for LeadingAge Wisconsin, helps serve nonprofit long-term care providers across the state. Some members invested significantly in recruiting international staff, she said. One CEO of a nursing home in Sparta invested over $100,000 into building five apartments for new overseas workers. When immigration policy changed and visas became difficult to procure, he had to pivot. Instead, he used the housing for current workers.
“International recruitment is a multi-year strategy, and it doesn’t happen overnight,” Battiato said. “One election can change the strategy that has been built over years. … It makes their already difficult challenges recruiting and retaining workers more difficult.”
Still, leaders are able to use innovative strategies to retain current workers and attract more domestic employees. Battiato said her members are used to thinking on their feet and quickly developing new strategies to address staffing gaps.
“They’ve actually seen a lot of success in recruiting and retaining workers from their local community using that same workforce strategy of worker housing that was originally developed for international workers,” Battiato said.
Valley VNA Senior Care in Neenah, a nonprofit that provides both in-home and assisted living services, has not only lost out on international workers it planned to hire, but also staff who were under Temporary Protected Status. HR Coordinator Cheryl Ehlers said losing those employees fed into the turnover the organization was already experiencing.
“We did have some staff that unfortunately had to go back,” Ehlers said. “We lost them as staff members because they lost their protected status, and they are always welcome to come back to us if they’re able to return to the United States.”
Temporary Protected Status applies to immigrants from specifically designated countries that have been deemed unsafe due to a crisis, such as war or natural disaster. TPS allows them to live and work in the U.S. temporarily.
The Trump administration has terminated 14 TPS programs, affecting people from 13 countries. Nearly 350,000 Haitian immigrants lost TPS on Aug. 4. An estimated 53,000 TPS holders worked in health care in 2024, according to data from KFF.
In a press release, the Trump administration reaffirmed that the Temporary Protected Status program was always meant to be temporary and that Haitians could pursue legal status through other means. The Supreme Court backed the terminations of TPS for Haitians and Syrians in a June ruling.
Ehlers, who has worked at Valley VNA for over two decades, said the organization had also been trying to hire 15-20 workers from overseas for at least the last five years, but ultimately stopped hearing from the partner agency it was working with.
Haitian caregivers in Wisconsin lose immigration status
Marc Christopher, an immigration attorney who represents some of the hundreds of Haitian immigrants in central Wisconsin, said many of them work in home health care and nursing. Haitians in Wisconsin are losing their work permits and immigration status and are facing deportation.
“It’s a lose-lose-lose for our community,” Christopher said. “Number one, the employers that are employing people to provide the care, they’re losing valuable labor, people who are helping. For the people that they’re taking care of … they’re getting good quality care. And then obviously, it’s a lose for my clients, who are in a desperate situation because they’re now being told that they have to go back.”
The country is still considered unsafe due to gang violence and humanitarian crises. The U.S. Department of State issued a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory in July. According to a 2025 press release, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem determined conditions had improved enough for Haitians to return.
Christopher is in the process of helping clients apply for asylum, which takes years. He stressed that most Haitians came to the U.S. legally under Temporary Protected Status. For the time being, many Haitians are weighing their options.
“So now they have to make that decision,” Christopher said. “Do they file for asylum, or do they simply go back, or do they live in this perilous state where they don’t have any status? … And that’s what affects our community. … Their kids go to school with my kids. They are working in our community.”
Zabi Sahibzada is the refugee resettlement director for Jewish Social Services of Madison. With no one new coming in, he’s trying to focus on supporting the refugees and immigrants who are already here. Three full-time and one part-time caseworker manage more than 500 individuals in addition to those who knock on their doors every day.
Out of his clients who are in the workforce, Sahibzada estimates 30% lost their jobs in the medical sector. They now need help with food, rental assistance, medical services and legal services, and JSS has limited funding.
“Some of our clients who used to work in those health care providers and the places like health care facilities, and some even providing transportation to the health care facilities, they have been losing their jobs,” Sahibzada said. “They have lost their driving licenses. They have lost their eligibility status.”
When a direct care worker loses their job, it can also mean a deeply personal relationship is “shattered,” Sloan of LeadingAge said.
“You’ve been there for four years and have had the same caregiver who knows everything about you, knows your birthday, knows what you like to eat for breakfast, knows what time you like to go to bed, knows what movies you watch … suddenly, that person is ripped away from you, which is what has happened recently with TPS,” Sloan said. “You’ve really lost an important part of your life.”
President Donald Trump shakes hands with newly sworn in Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin during a ceremony in the Oval Office at the White House on March 24, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Temporary protected status for 170,000 Salvadorans is set to expire at midnight Wednesday, but the Department of Homeland Security said protections will remain in place until the Trump administration makes a decision to extend or terminate El Salvador’s designation, in place since 2001.
“An announcement on El Salvador’s TPS will be made at the appropriate time,” a DHS spokesperson said in an email to States Newsroom. “Until such announcement is made, Salvadoran individuals present in the U.S. under TPS retain protection.”
Based on the temporary protected status statute, if a determination to extend or terminate a country’s protections is not made by the government by the expiration of the deadline, then TPS is automatically extended for six months.
If the Trump administration does make a determination to end protections, then Salvadorans will have 60 days to leave the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has not indicated his plans for El Salvador’s temporary legal protections. Additionally, there is no notice in Wednesday’s Federal Register or a preview of Thursday’s edition regarding TPS for El Salvador.
On Tuesday, White House border czar Tom Homan said the decision would be up to Mullin, but added that El Salvador is now much safer than when its previous designation was made in 2001.
If TPS is terminated for nationals for El Salvador, they will be the latest large group of immigrants to lose their legal status in the country as President Donald Trump has sought to dismantle the program Congress created for people who hail from countries deemed too dangerous for return.
The Supreme Court has accelerated that move. The court’s conservative majority this summer determined that the TPS statute does not allow decisions on country designations, terminations and extensions to be subject to judicial review.
Before the start of the second Trump administration, 17 countries had TPS, totaling to about 1.3 million immigrants with legal status.
Now, if TPS for El Salvador ends, only three countries will remain: Lebanon, Sudan and Ukraine.
TPS is granted to nationals who hail from a country experiencing a natural disaster, violence, or other extreme circumstances, allowing them to remain in the U.S. and obtain work permits that last for six-to-18-month cycles.
Each renewal process requires a TPS holder to go through a background check and pay hundreds of dollars in fees as well as undergo other vetting.
If TPS ends for El Salvador, it could stymie the country’s economy, where more than a quarter of its gross domestic product relies on money sent back to the country from Salvadorans in the U.S., known as remittances.
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, also has a close relationship with the Trump administration, ranging from accepting deportees that are not Salvadoran into his country to visiting the president at the White House.
In 2019, Bukele asked the first Trump administration to extend TPS protections, not because El Salvador was unsafe, but because the end of designation would break apart families in the U.S.
Bukele has not made any recent public calls for the Trump administration to continue TPS for Salvadorans.
Jose Palma holds the work authorization cards of a Salvadoran member of the National TPS Alliance. The individual has renewed work permits 14 times since Temporary Protected Status was granted for El Salvador in 2001, submitting a background check and fingerprints with each renewal cycle. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — For years, Jose Palma has advocated for immigrants with Temporary Protected Status who hail from countries deemed too unstable for return.
But as the Trump administration has stripped those humanitarian protections for nearly a million people, the Salvadoran national is uncertain if his own legal status will remain in place next week.
“I’m going day by day,” Palma, who lives in Texas, told States Newsroom in an interview.
Jose Palma, the coordinator for the National TPS Alliance, advocates for Temporary Protected Status recipients across the U.S. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)
Palma first obtained TPS in 2001, along with roughly 170,000 recipients from El Salvador, due to several earthquakes that displaced more than one-sixth of the population and left thousands dead. The United States renewed protections over the years, citing continued displacement and ongoing violence.
But the TPS designation for El Salvador is set to expire Sept. 9, and the Department of Homeland Security has made no indication if protections will be renewed.
Under DHS policy, an announcement typically is made 60 days in advance of the date of a TPS expiration if a renewal is planned.
Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, who helped write the statute for TPS when he was a congressional staffer, said he’s asked Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to renew protections for El Salvador.
“I still haven’t received a response back,” McGovern said during a Thursday press conference at the U.S. Capitol. He was joined by Nebraska GOP Rep. Don Bacon, who said many Salvadoran TPS recipients work and live in his Omaha district.
DHS did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.
The Trump administration’s position on the program is that it’s “temporary,” and that country conditions have improved, despite warnings from the State Department to not travel to some of those countries where TPS designation has ended, such as Haiti.
If TPS for El Salvador ends, only 103,000 out of initially 1.3 million recipients from around the globe will have protections: 150 from Lebanon, 1,790 from Sudan and 101,150 from Ukraine.
Supreme Court decision
TPS is granted to nationals who hail from a country experiencing a natural disaster, violence, or other extreme circumstances, allowing them to remain in the U.S. and obtain work permits.
Some protections can last through six-to-18-month cycles, and each renewal process requires a TPS holder to go through a background check and other vetting.
Before the second Trump administration, 17 countries were in the program. Only four, including El Salvador, remain as the White House has forged ahead aggressively on its mass deportation campaign.
The Supreme Court made the move easier after it ruled this summer that decisions from the executive branch to end TPS were not subject to judicial review. The order meant that lower courts that initially blocked the Trump administration from ending the designations had to reverse their decisions.
Now recipients face the end of TPS with just 60 days’ notice.
“It’s one of those things that is kind of cruel, to have families who are stable and have been stable for decades, to have people who have been doing everything the government asked them to do for 25 years, and suddenly, if the decision is to end TPS, provided only 60 days protection before forcing people to go back to a country they haven’t been for decades,” Palma said.
One of the first countries after TPS was written into law to receive the designation was El Salvador.
Stripping TPS from Salvadorans would not only harm the U.S. economy, but it would also negatively impact El Salvador’s fragile economy, advocates predict. More than one quarter of El Salvador’s Gross Domestic Product comes from family members sending money back to relatives in their country of origin, known as remittances.
“El Salvador’s economy has been built thanks to all the remittances,” said Ana María Méndez-Dardón, the director for Central America at the Washington Office on Latin America, or WOLA. “So if people are returning, that would have a huge impact because the economy depends on the money that people from El Salvador living in the U.S. send to El Salvador.”
The spending also has an impact in the United States. Salvadoran TPS recipients contribute $5.4 billion to the U.S. economy and pay $1.5 billion in federal, state and local taxes, according to the immigration advocacy research group FWD.us.
About 152,000 TPS recipients from El Salvador are in the workforce, mainly in construction, manufacturing, building and transportation.
Attempts in Congress
TPS does not create a pathway to citizenship and a recipient can only apply for it when the country receives its designation.
Some TPS recipients can apply for asylum if they qualify, or others could apply to adjust their status to that of a lawful permanent resident, or green-card holder, through a family-based or employer-based petition.
Congress has made some effort to extend TPS for some recipients. Earlier this year, the House passed a bill to extend TPS for up to 350,000 Haitians on a bipartisan basis, but it’s stalled in the upper chamber.
At a Sept. 3, 2026, press conference, Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern was joined by Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., and immigration and labor advocates to push for the renewal of Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)
Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen attempted to advance a bill in the Senate to create a legal pathway to citizenship for immigrants with TPS, but was blocked by Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt.
McGovern said Thursday that there is a bipartisan push to extend protections for TPS recipients. Proof of that was Bacon’s presence at the press conference.
“What good is it to force out folks who’ve been here legally, who are working, who are part of our community?” Bacon said. “It does no one any good.”
Human rights in El Salvador
Many Salvadorian TPS recipients are worried about being forced back to El Salvador, where human rights groups have raised concerns about the authoritarian government of President Nayib Bukele, said WOLA’s Méndez-Dardón.
WOLA is a research and advocacy group that aims to advance human rights in North and South America. It has documented how Bukele’s political party has suspended due process rights and has carried out a mass incarceration of suspected gang members in an effort to reduce crime and murders.
More than 90,000 Salvadorans have been jailed without due process and hundreds have died in prisons and altogether disappeared, human rights groups have reported.
“So for Salvadorians who might be returned, the risk no longer are the criminal groups or the gangs because many of them fled the country because of the security situation,” Méndez-Dardón said. “But although the gangs are no longer the threat, now the threat is the state.”
Bukele has met with President Donald Trump several times at the White House and has a years-long working relationship with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who last year granted El Salvador the highest possible safety rating for travel, a level 1.
In 2024, the State Department gave El Salvador a level 3 advisory, warning people to reconsider travel because of security and safety concerns.
The Trump administration also last year made a deal with the Salvadoran government to pay up to $6 million to detain hundreds of Venezuelans at a brutal mega-prison. In the high-profile case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland Salvadoran who was mistakenly deported to the mega prison, lawyers documented mental and physical torture he experienced while there.
“People are basically under a constant fear of being detained by the security forces,” Méndez-Dardón said.
U.S. citizen children
Palma, who also attended the press conference, said he, along with other Salvadoran TPS recipients, are concerned about El Salvador’s government.
“So crime has gone down, but now abuses to human rights have increased,” he said. “That is concerning, because it’s also the government is becoming more aggressive against opposition, public media.”
Palma questioned if El Salvador would have the infrastructure to accept as many as 200,000 Salvadorans, made up of the TPS recipients and their families. Many have U.S. citizen children.
Palma, who has four U.S. citizen children, said two of his kids are still in primary school. One is 11 and another is 8 years old.
“This is their country,” he said of his four children. “They are from here. But if I were to lose the TPS protection and I were to be forced to go back to El Salvador, it’s not just affecting me. It’s affecting the whole family. That’s kind of like the situation that so many people across the country are going through right now.”
Cristel Argueta is one of those children. At 20 years old, she’s a college student at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. But on Thursday, she missed four classes relating to her criminology and criminal justice degree to travel to the nation’s capital and advocate for an extension to TPS for El Salvador.
“I’m missing class to be here, but it’s worth it because it’s for my family,” she said.
Cristel Argueta, a 20-year-old criminology and criminal justice college student, traveled to Washington, D.C. to advocate for Temporary Protected Status holders as well as push for the Trump administration to renew humanitarian protections for Salvadorans. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)
Her mother, a TPS holder from El Salvador, came to the U.S. when she was 19, fleeing the civil war that lasted from 1979 until 1992. Her mother was able to get TPS in 2001.
“She has been in this country longer than she has been in El Salvador,” Argueta said. “TPS was started by Salvadorans, and I don’t want to lose my mother.”
She’s hoping her mother’s TPS is extended until at least Argueta’s 21st birthday, when Argueta will be able to become a sponsor and apply to change her mother’s status to that of a lawful permanent resident.
“No one should be going through this at any age,” she said. “Seeing the difference in my peers at school who are 20 years old, waiting to turn 21, to get that first legal drink or go party, but I want to turn 21 just to give my mom a legal status. A permanent legal status.”
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