The United States Department of Homeland Security will maintain, until further notice, the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) that benefits some 170,000 Salvadorans and was scheduled to expire yesterday, September 9.
«An announcement regarding El Salvador’s TPS will be made at the appropriate time. Until that announcement is made, Salvadorans who are in the United States under TPS maintain their protection,” said a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson.
The expiration date of said TPS was set for midnight on Wednesday, so the benefit, in force since 2001, threatened to leave thousands of Salvadorans in immigration limbo.
In 2001, after two devastating earthquakes on January 13 and February 13, President George W. Bush’s administration granted TPS to citizens of El Salvador.
#FromPlanet | The official @USCIS site regarding the #TPS of El Salvador has just been updated. The United States Government thus reiterates that Salvadorans with TPS will maintain their protected status until “an announcement is made at the appropriate time.” pic.twitter.com/scmzZCIvDz
— Diario El Salvador (@elsalvador) September 9, 2026
Since his arrival in 2017, Trump tried to cancel this program, but due to a lawsuit in 2018 it remained in force.
Upon his return to the White House, in January 2025, the president began to suspend these immigration reliefs that have benefited countries that have been hit by conflicts or natural disasters.
Last August, the Department of Homeland Security ended TPS for 350,000 people from Haiti and the Trump Administration has also withdrawn TPS from immigrants from Afghanistan, Honduras, Syria, and Nicaragua, among other countries.
Just yesterday, the US border czar, Tom Homan, insisted that the “temporary protected status means it is temporary” and stated that El Salvador “is much safer” since Nayib Bukele became president.
