White House Pauses TPS Revocation for El Salvadorans

The White House has paused the U.S. government’s impending termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for El Salvadoran migrants in the United States, according to reports.

On September 3, E-Verify, a website maintained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that verifies individuals’ eligibility to work in the United States, issued a notice that “an announcement on El Salvador’s TPS will be made at the appropriate time.” It continued: “Until such announcement is made, Salvadoran individuals present in the U.S. under TPS retain protection including work authorization.” El Salvador’s TPS designation was supposed to expire on September 9, but with no action taken, protections will continue for now.

According to media reports, DHS was prepared to terminate El Salvador’s TPS designation but the White House overruled it. The New Yorker, citing unnamed “former D.H.S. officials,” reported that a “memo formalizing the termination had been prepared more than a month earlier. It was sitting on the desk of Markwayne Mullin, the Secretary of Homeland Security. Notices informing beneficiaries that their status would be ending had already been issued and were ready to be sent to a printer.” Politico similarly reported that “the White House hit the brakes” on the revocation.

Avoiding Pre-election Controversy?

Outsiders speculated that President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking to avoid controversy over TPS as the election approaches. Speaking to Politico, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies said that the White House “may just be thinking, let’s make this go away for six months until after the election, not because it’s going to have any direct effect on the election. They just don’t want the news stories about this.”

According to Politico, an unnamed individual “close to the administration” noted Texas’ large Salvadoran population and said that Salvadoran TPS recipients are “connected to some very high-level donors and business leaders that have reached out to the president and senior officials.”

The TPS program was established by the Immigration Act of 1990. El Salvador’s current TPS designation has existed since March 9, 2001, following major earthquakes that occurred earlier that year. Trump attempted to terminate the designation during his first term, but was blocked by the federal judiciary.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, from the beginning of his tenure, has advocated preserving his country’s TPS designation due to the amount of money Salvadoran TPS recipients send from the United States to El Salvador.

Terminating TPS

So far in Trump’s second term, his administration has terminated or is attempting to terminate TPS designations for 13 countries — Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen — affecting more than one million migrants. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Mullin v. Doe that the Trump administration could lawfully end TPS for Haiti and Syria, which alone affected about 340,000 of those migrants.

Meanwhile, the TPS designation remains for four countries — El Salvador, Lebanon, Sudan, and Ukraine — comprising about 270,000 migrants. The Trump administration has yet to decide one way or the other for the latter two countries.

Violating the Constitution

Although Congress originally enacted TPS “in an attempt to hem in unilateral executive actions on immigration,” the policy itself violates Article I, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, which vests “all legislative Powers” in Congress. By allowing the executive branch to unilaterally grant de facto amnesty to significant numbers of illegal migrants, TPS unconstitutionally delegates legislative power to the executive.

Additionally, TPS is anything but limited. As immigration expert Dan Cadman noted in an op-ed published by the Daily Signal:

But since its humble beginnings, Temporary Protected Status has ballooned to become a massive giveaway program. According to a March 2024 Pew Research Center report, the status has been granted to roughly 1.2 million aliens from over 16 countries worldwide since the beginning of the program, far exceeding any reasonable boundaries for what was intended to be a sparingly granted exercise of discretion for small groups of people.

As Milton Friedman memorably said, “There is nothing so permanent as a temporary government program.” The problem with any benefits-granting program, but especially with immigration benefits-granting programs, is that they come with built-in, long-term expectations.

The solution is for Congress to repeal TPS, along with the underlying Immigration Act of 1990.

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