‘Temporary’ in name only: How TPS allows foreigners to stay in the US for years

As the Trump administration seeks to rescind temporary protective status for people from a slew of foreign countries, some of whose designations date back decades, TPS faces increasing scrutiny from border security advocates who say the program is “temporary” in name only.

In theory, TPS affords immigrants the temporary right to remain in the United States. In practice, however, it blurs the line between temporary protection and permanent residency.

Decades-old TPS protections have been repeatedly extended between administrations, leading to foreigners treating the program as an immigration workaround and expecting extensions in perpetuity.

How ‘temporary’ is the TPS program?

The intended purpose of Temporary Protected Status, a program created through the Immigration Act of 1990, is to provide temporary humanitarian relief for foreign nationals in emergency situations who cannot safely return to their countries of origin.

During a designated period in which their home country has such protected status, TPS holders are not deportable and are even eligible to work in the U.S.

Border hawks say that since its inception, the TPS program has been exploited as a back-door form of amnesty that shields immigrants — regardless of illegal entry — from deportation, allowing them to technically “lawfully” stay in the U.S. for years, sometimes decades, without fear of removal.

THE PERMANENT TEMPORARY PROGRAM THAT MAKES ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS LEGAL

“I think one of the biggest issues with TPS is that it is in effect a lie,” Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, told the Washington Examiner. “Take El Salvadorians who were first granted it in March 2001. That means they have had it for 24 years. This completely contradicts the ‘temporary’ intent of this program.”

The U.S. government generally grants a foreign country a TPS designation in the event of ongoing armed conflict, such as civil war, environmental disaster, epidemic, or other “extraordinary” living conditions of a temporary nature.

TPS is often routinely renewed long after the triggering event. Haiti, for example, still has TPS protection despite its catastrophic 2010 earthquake, which happened nearly a decade and a half ago. Honduras and Nicaragua, the countries with the oldest TPS designations besides Somalia, have had so-called “temporary” protected status since 1999.

“By no stretch of the imagination is 26 years temporary,” Federation for American Immigration Reform media director Ira Mehlman said. “In the case of Haiti, the earthquake that triggered the original designation occurred 14 years ago.”

Mehlman told the Washington Examiner that terminating TPS should not require ideal conditions in the home country, just that the immediate crisis no longer exists.

HOMAN SAYS TEMPORARY PROTECTED STATUS IS NOT MEANT TO BE ‘DECADES LONG‘

“[Haiti] was dysfunctional and corrupt before the earthquake,” Mehlman said, “and not surprisingly, it remains so all these years later.”

In 2021, following numerous TPS extensions under the Obama administration, then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced a new TPS designation for Haiti based on “serious security concerns, social unrest, an increase in human rights abuses, crippling poverty, and lack of basic resources … exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic” as well as purported “persistent effects of the 2010 earthquake.”

Mehlman noted that these endless extensions and “re-designations” are pushed by the foreign nationals themselves, many of whom were illegal immigrants and had no real intention of returning home, as well as by mass immigration advocacy groups and the governments of those countries that prefer to see their citizens remain here and send home remittances.

“Often, at some point in this process,” Mehlman said, “these same interest groups begin demanding that all of these ‘temporary’ guests be granted permanent status based on them having been here for so long.”

HOUSE DEMOCRATS BRING BACK THE DREAM ACT

Two Biden administration-era bills that would have provided Lawful Permanent Resident status to certain TPS recipients passed in the House but stopped short in the Senate. Title II of the American Dream and Promise Act of 2021 would have allowed TPS-eligible aliens who had been in the U.S. for three years to become LPRs, and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2021 would have established a legal framework for farm workers granted TPS to obtain LPR status eventually.

House Democrats introduced similar measures during the last legislative session, such as the 2023 version of the American Dream and Promise Act, which had a provision that would have provided TPS holders with a path to permanent residency.

An overwhelming TPS approval rate, relatively few denials

TPS is meant to be a “blanket” suspension mechanism against the threat of deportation, ensuring automatic relief from removal.

So far in fiscal 2025, only 7,599 applications for temporary protected status have been denied out of 518,848 total requests, constituting a 1.5% denial rate, according to data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Meanwhile, 290,167 applicants were approved, a majority from Venezuela (115,380) and Haiti (107,659). As of March 31, 808,124 cases were “pending” and awaiting an adjudicative decision.

However, some submissions, including those ultimately approved or denied, were received prior to this reporting period, which started on Oct. 1. USCIS does not specify which filings predate this disclosure cycle. Processing of a TPS application typically takes around six months.

According to a Washington Examiner analysis of annual TPS statistics, approval and denial breakdowns have been similarly disparate since at least fiscal 2013, the last year USCIS provides publicly available data documenting differences in case outcomes.

TPS approvals overwhelmingly outpace denials, the datasets show:

It is unclear exactly how many were returning TPS holders. The number of renewals is not reported annually, although applicants must indicate on Form I-821, the application for temporary protected status, whether they are first-time TPS seekers or re-registering.

USCIS was contacted for comment on the disclosure data.

The state of TPS today

Through recurring extensions and “re-designations,” TPS has incentivized illegal immigrants to flood the U.S. border.

In fiscal 2023, the volume of TPS applications increased by about 137% due to new and extended designations for 16 foreign nations. On their applications, 57.2% of TPS seekers claim that their prior immigration status is “Unknown,” meaning they may have illegally entered the U.S. without inspection, were stowaways, or had overstayed their visas, USCIS reported to Congress at the time.

As of Sept. 30, approximately 1,095,115 foreign nationals from TPS-designated countries were residing in the U.S. with TPS protection, according to a congressional research report based on USCIS estimates.

1. Lebanon’s TPS designation came after the Sept. 30 data collection ︎

TPS recipients are settled all across the U.S. The largest populations of TPS holders live in Florida (357,895) and Texas (124,710), followed by New York (86,665), California (72,585), and Georgia (41,325), according to USCIS settlement counts.

President Donald Trump’s first administration tried to terminate TPS for several foreign states, such as Haiti and El Salvador, after determining that the circumstances in these countries no longer warranted TPS protections.

Lawfare ensued, forcing Trump’s Department of Homeland Security to continue TPS pending litigation. Former President Joe Biden rescinded the terminations by extending TPS eligibility and issuing newly defined designations, rendering the legal matters moot.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ABANDONS BIDEN-ERA TPS EXTENSIONS FOR HAITIAN MIGRANTS

“So what was designed to be a temporary program done at the discretion of the executive becomes a permanent program that cannot be ended even if the president wishes to do so,” Camarota said.

Given that few groups have ever lost this protected status, coverage under the TPS program has, in effect, become “indefinitely temporary,” Camarota explained.

Consequently, this not-so-temporary aspect incites a sense of widespread public cynicism, according to Camarota. “So, it is not just that the program has been abused by administration after administration, it is that the program destroys public confidence in our immigration system.”

“Reforming the TPS program would require that our government acknowledge that the ‘T’ stands for ‘temporary,’” Mehlman said.

Among much-needed fundamental reforms, Mehlman suggested limiting the duration that TPS recipients are allowed to remain in the immediate aftermath of the qualifying crisis.

“If the temporary nature of TPS cannot be honored, then the program should be scrapped,” Mehlman said.

TRUMP’S EFFORTS TO END TPS FOR MULTIPLE COUNTRIES TIED UP IN LEGAL BATTLES

Now in his second term, Trump’s administration is attempting again to end TPS coverage for a handful of foreign countries, including Venezuela, Nepal, Cameroon, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Haiti, by way of revocation or allowing designations to lapse in the absence of renewal.

Like last time, these efforts face challenges in court, although the Trump administration is racking up wins with the Supreme Court and at the appellate level.