Temporary Protected Status and the Countries It Covers

When President George H. W. Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990 on November 29 of that year, most of the attention went to the big numbers: more visas for skilled workers, a new lottery for countries underrepresented in the immigrant stream, an overhaul of the categories that had governed legal immigration for a quarter century. Tucked inside the bill was a smaller idea with a modest name. Temporary Protected Status would let the government tell people already in the United States that they did not have to go home to a country on fire, under rubble, or in the grip of an epidemic, at least for now. The law even named its first beneficiary in the text: El Salvador, then deep in a civil war. More than three decades later, "for now" has become one of the most contested phrases in American immigration law.

In short: Temporary Protected Status lets people from designated countries live and work legally in the US while conditions at home make return unsafe, but it never becomes a green card by itself. The Secretary of Homeland Security decides which countries qualify and for how long, and a 2026 Supreme Court ruling confirmed that courts can review very little of those decisions.

The problem the 1990 law tried to solve

Before 1990, presidents dealt with dangerous homelands through an improvised tool called Extended Voluntary Departure. It had no statutory standards. An administration could extend it to nationals of one troubled country and decline it for Salvadorans fleeing a war in which the US government backed one side. Critics argued, with reason, that foreign-policy loyalties rather than danger decided who got relief.

The Temporary Protected Status provision, codified as section 244 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, was meant to replace that discretion with a rule. It lists three grounds on which a country can be designated:

1. Ongoing armed conflict, when returning people would pose a serious threat to their personal safety.
2. Environmental disaster, such as an earthquake, flood, drought or epidemic, that substantially disrupts living conditions, and where the country's government has asked for the designation because it cannot adequately handle the return of its nationals.
3. Extraordinary and temporary conditions that prevent safe return, unless letting the people stay would be contrary to the national interest.

That third ground is the broadest, and it is where much of the modern fight takes place.

How designation, extension and termination work

The decision-maker was originally the Attorney General. Since the Homeland Security Act of 2002, it is the Secretary of Homeland Security, who consults with other agencies, chiefly the State Department, before acting.

A designation runs for 6, 12 or 18 months. At least 60 days before it expires, the Secretary must review conditions and decide whether to extend or end it, and must publish that decision in the Federal Register. If the Secretary does nothing, the statute extends the designation automatically for six months. Termination takes effect no earlier than 60 days after the notice is published.

There are two kinds of decisions to keep apart:

• A new designation or redesignation sets fresh eligibility dates, so people who arrived more recently can apply.
• An extension keeps the existing group protected without letting new people in.

The difference matters enormously. An extension protects people who have often been here for decades. A redesignation reaches the newest arrivals and is therefore the more politically charged choice.

Who qualifies and what they get

Designation of a country does not cover everyone from it. To be eligible, a person generally must:

• be a national of the designated country (or a person without nationality who last lived there);
• have been continuously physically present in the US since the effective date set in the notice;
• have continuously resided here since a date the notice specifies;
• register during the published window and re-register each time the designation is extended;
• not be barred by criminal history or security grounds, which include a felony conviction or two misdemeanor convictions in the US.

What holders receive is protection from removal while the designation lasts, permission to work, and permission to travel abroad with advance approval. They pay filing fees and submit biometrics, often every 18 months, sometimes for many years.

What they do not receive is a path to permanent residence through TPS itself. The Supreme Court made that especially clear in Sanchez v. Mayorkas in 2021, a unanimous opinion by Justice Kagan. A man from El Salvador who had entered without inspection and later held TPS for years sought a green card through his employer. The Court held that TPS does not count as a lawful "admission," so it could not cure the original unlawful entry for that purpose. Holders who entered with a visa may have options their neighbours lack. Congress has also built in a political speed bump: the statute calls for a three-fifths vote in the Senate to consider legislation giving TPS holders permanent residence as a class.

The map, and why it keeps changing

So which countries does TPS cover? The honest answer is: check the current list, because it moves. Designations are published in the Federal Register and summarized on U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' TPS page, and any list printed here would go out of date.

The history, though, shows the pattern. Honduras and Nicaragua were designated in early 1999 after Hurricane Mitch. El Salvador received a new designation in 2001 after a series of earthquakes. Haiti was designated after the January 2010 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince. Others followed for war and collapse: Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and in the 2020s Venezuela, Afghanistan, Burma, Ukraine and Ethiopia among them.

Notice the time spans. Hondurans protected after a 1998 hurricane were still renewing more than two decades later. Supporters of those extensions argued that conditions never truly recovered, that gang violence and repeated storms had piled new emergencies on old ones. Opponents argued the extensions showed that "temporary" had become a fiction, that a disaster status was being used as a substitute for an immigration policy Congress had never written.

Both observations are true. That is the trap in this program. Congress created a temporary remedy and then never answered the question of what happens to people who stay through a dozen extensions, raise American-born children and own homes. Families with long TPS histories are part of the workforce in construction, home health care and food processing in many metropolitan areas.

The terminations and what the courts said

In President Trump's first term, his administration moved to end TPS for several countries, including El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Nepal and Sudan. Holders sued, arguing among other things that the decisions reflected racial animus and broke with past practice without explanation. Lower courts paused many of the terminations for years, and the cases were still tied up when the administration changed.

The second Trump administration moved again, and faster, announcing terminations that included the 2023 designation of Venezuela, Haiti and Afghanistan among others. In 2025 the Supreme Court allowed the Venezuela termination to take effect while litigation continued.

Then came the decision that settled the larger question. In Mullin v. Doe, decided June 25, 2026, the Court held that courts cannot review most challenges to ending Temporary Protected Status. The statute had always contained language saying there is no judicial review of any determination with respect to designation, termination or extension of a designation. The Court read that bar as meaning what it said for most claims. Our court watch page carries the Court's own summary of the holding and tracks related emergency applications.

Here is the fair case for that outcome. Congress wrote the no-review clause on purpose. It gave the call to the executive branch, which conducts foreign policy and can weigh conditions abroad, and it chose not to let district judges second-guess that call country by country. If the policy is too harsh, the remedy is to change the statute, not to stretch judicial review.

Here is the answer. A bar on reviewing the Secretary's judgment about whether Haiti is safe is not the same as a license to ignore the statute's own procedures, or to act on reasons the statute forbids. The Court's holding leaves some room for claims that fall outside the bar, and lawyers will keep testing that room. But the practical effect is plain: for hundreds of thousands of people, the decision now rests almost entirely with one official and with Congress. That makes the political branches, not the courts, the place where this gets fought.

Where progressives could do better on this

There is a temptation on the left to treat every extension as obviously right and every termination as obviously cruel. The program is more uncomfortable than that.

A tool designed for short emergencies cannot carry the weight of permanent settlement, and pretending otherwise has helped opponents paint TPS as a loophole. Using extensions year after year, rather than pushing hard for legislation that gives long-term holders a real status, left those holders exposed to exactly the reversal that came. The best argument for long-term holders is not that conditions at home are still bad, though they often are. It is that people who have lived here lawfully for 15 or 25 years, paid taxes, and raised citizen children have become Americans in every sense but the paperwork, and the paperwork should catch up.

That argument has crossed party lines before. Republican members of Congress from districts with large Salvadoran, Honduran and Haitian communities, including in South Florida, have pushed to protect TPS holders, sometimes against their own party's leadership. Business groups in construction and hospitality have joined them. That coalition is the one that could actually pass something.

What a holder's life looks like under this system

Picture the calendar. Every 18 months, sometimes less, a notice appears in the Federal Register. Until it does, a family does not know if the next re-registration will happen, if the work permit will be extended, if the employer will keep them on while the paperwork lags. When an extension comes, there is a window to file and a fee to pay. When a termination comes, there is a wind-down period, after which a nurse's aide who has lived in Maryland since 2001 may be told to return to a country she left as a teenager.

That uncertainty has costs beyond the household. Employers lose trained workers. Mortgages go unpaid. Children who are citizens face the choice of leaving their country or staying without a parent. None of that is an argument that any particular designation must last forever. It is an argument that the country should decide, through its legislature, what it owes to people it invited to stay for decades.

Congress has fixed this before

The idea that long-term holders can only wait for the next notice is not a law of nature. Congress has stepped in several times to give people in temporary or discretionary status a permanent one, often with votes from both parties.

In 1997, the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act let many Nicaraguans and Cubans who had lived here for years apply for green cards, and eased the path for some Salvadorans and Guatemalans. A year later, the Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act did something similar for many Haitians. Both were narrow, both were negotiated by members of Congress from communities with large immigrant populations, and both passed.

The most striking example involves Liberia. Liberians received TPS during their country's civil war in the early 1990s. When that designation ended, presidents of both parties kept them in the country under a related tool called Deferred Enforced Departure, which rests on the president's foreign-affairs power rather than on any statute. For close to three decades, Liberian families lived on renewals, much as TPS holders do. Then, in December 2019, Congress included a provision in the annual defense authorization bill letting eligible Liberians apply for permanent residence. A Republican president signed it. The provision was championed by lawmakers from Rhode Island and Minnesota, states with sizable Liberian communities, and it moved because it was small, specific and attached to a bill that had to pass.

That is a template worth studying. Sweeping immigration bills have failed again and again. Targeted bills that settle the status of a defined group of long-time residents, with local champions in both parties, have a better record. TPS holders from a given country, with a given number of years in the United States, are exactly that kind of group.

The fair objection is that every such bill invites the charge that temporary relief always becomes permanent, which makes future designations harder to justify. It is a real cost. But the alternative, decades of renewals followed by sudden removal, is worse for the holders, their employers and the country's credibility as a place whose promises mean something.

What you can do

• Check the official list before you share anything. Designations change by Federal Register notice, and rumours spread faster than notices. If you know a TPS holder, the USCIS country pages give the current re-registration dates and fees.
• Point people to real legal help. A termination notice is the worst time to rely on a notario. Our directory of nonprofits lists immigrant-rights and legal-aid groups in every state, including those that screen holders for other forms of relief they may already qualify for.
• Ask your members of Congress for a bill, not a statement. With courts largely out of the picture, permanent status for long-term holders is a legislative question. Use our tool for finding your representatives to get your House member's and senators' numbers and see their latest votes, then ask whether they will co-sponsor legislation for people who have held TPS for years.
• Follow the topic, not just the headlines. Our immigration and ICE topic page gathers reporting on designations, terminations and enforcement as they happen.

The 1990 Congress believed it was building a bridge across a storm. For many families, the storm never ended, and the bridge became the place they live. Deciding what to build there is a job only Congress can do.