The future of the Temporary Protected Status program, and the legal status of 270,000 people who still have it, is at risk after a big Supreme Court ruling last week.
The court's ruling allowed the Trump administration to move forward with cancelling TPS for two countries, Haiti and Syria. But it also underscored that the secretary of homeland security decides whether to grant someone this status, or end it, and it's not up to the courts to weigh in. That gives the Trump administration space to strip this status from hundreds of thousands of more people.
The Trump administration has already terminated TPS for 10 countries, so far affecting more than a million people. Four countries still have TPS designations, but they're set to expire later this year: Lebanon, El Salvador, Sudan, and Ukraine.
"It certainly does seem like the number of people who have TPS will continue to decline in this administration," said Julia Gelatt, associate director of U.S. immigration policy at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. "We may even end up by the end of this year without anybody who has temporary protected status."
About 330,000 people, mostly from Haiti and a fraction from Syria, are immediately affected by the June 25 ruling.
Congress created TPS in 1990 to provide protection from deportation for people, regardless of legal status, whose countries are unsafe to return to because of political instability, war, natural disasters and other factors. The homeland security secretary can grant this designation to people from specific countries for a period of 6 to 18 months; those granted TPS also get a permit to legally work in the U.S.
Citizens of El Salvador have had TPS for the longest time: 26 years.
"They live with hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens, family members and spouses and siblings," said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, an immigrant advocacy organization. "These are people who have been building their lives here for over a quarter century, and there is no precedent in modern immigration history for revoking status for a population like that."
Data provided by DHS as of March 31 of last year shows that over a quarter of a million people could still be on active TPS designations. These numbers are estimates, however; it's possible people have secured other forms of legal status since March 2025, have left the country or have died since the tally was reported.
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DHS did not respond to questions about the future of the remaining TPS designations. Any potential extensions or terminations for the remaining countries would be announced in a Federal Register Notice.
DHS urges those on terminated TPS to leave the country
The administration has criticized the TPS program and multiple extensions for certain countries, arguing that such status is meant to be temporary. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said people on the program can or should have tried to apply for other forms of legal status to stay in the U.S., such as green cards, or should leave the U.S. entirely.
"The status itself can be ended," Mullin said on CNN on Sunday. "Either try to fill out the paperwork and be here under permanent status or we'll help you get back to your home country."
TPS itself does not lead to more permanent legal status – such as a green card or citizenship. But some people could adjust their status depending on individual circumstances, including how they entered the country, their criminal record and their use of public benefits, Mullin said.
"A lot of these individuals haven't been here 18 months, they have been here 18 years. … they have had plenty of time to establish their status inside the United States and they chose not to," Mullin said, adding that he believes others took advantage of the program under the Biden administration.
Adjusting status may not be that simple.
"There is no TPS to green card pathway," Schulte said, adding that claiming asylum is something that can mostly only be done within a year of arriving in the country. Other potential pathways could be marrying a U.S. citizen.
But this Trump administration has also curtailed or slowed many pathways to legal status, or used them as a venue for immigration officers to conduct arrests and deportations.
DHS had also, for more than six months, paused processing all immigration applications of countries on a travel ban list. Haiti, Syria, Venezuela and Afghanistan and other countries with terminated TPS designations were on that list. Recent court rulings have ordered DHS to resume reviewing these paused applications, but progress has been slow.
"To the extent that there may be some other pathways, this very same administration has also banned them," Schulte said. "These are the very same people who are being subject to courthouse arrests."
"Where there is [an option] people are finding that that's often a way that they're being funneled into being arrested, which is absolutely a travesty," he added.
Various legal challenges continue to play out
The Supreme Court decision threw into limbo several other lawsuits against the administration's other terminations of TPS programs. Over the course of the last year, there have been other legal challenges to the TPS terminations of those from Ethiopia, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua and some people from Venezuela.
Several federal judges had paused the terminations; the Justice Department has vowed to appeal these decisions. In some cases, TPS recipients have been allowed to continue to work, though it is unclear how much longer they may be able to do so.
Jessica Bansal, TPS counsel with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, has been litigating several of the challenges to the TPS terminations. She said what is known for sure is that Haiti and Syria's Temporary Protected Status will go away — but the timing of that is unclear.
"There's a lot of uncertainty right now," she said, adding that after the Supreme Court's ruling, other TPS plaintiffs have some time to sort out if any of their legal challenges still stand. It means "the courts can no longer protect people on those grounds, but it is not 100% clear what's left yet, and that's going to play out in the courts over the next days and weeks."
For many people, it's also unclear when exactly they're no longer able to legally work in the U.S.
Gelatt noted that some employers could sponsor their TPS employees for another form of work visa – but that process is costly.
"Then the other issue is that many people who have temporary protected status spent some time in the United States without legal status," Gelatt said, noting that means people would need to spend up to 10 years outside the U.S. before being able to apply for a green card.
"So most people who have TPS and who have been on TPS for a long time simply don't have any path to permanent legal status in the United States," she said.
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