DHS said on Jan. 10 that it would extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) orders to nationals from those countries because their governments would not be able to accept them if they were deported by the United States.
It means that about 600,000 Venezuelans, more than 230,000 Salvadorans, more than 103,000 Ukrainians, and 1,900 Sudanese already living in the United States can legally remain for another 18 months.
The TPS designation allows those people to be in the country but doesn’t provide them with a long-term path to citizenship. They are reliant on the government’s renewing their status when it expires. Critics have said that over time, the renewal of the protection status becomes automatic, regardless of what is happening in the person’s home country.
DHS said that its announcement regarding Venezuelan nationals is because of “extraordinary and temporary conditions that prevent eligible Venezuelan nationals from safely returning” to the country because of a “severe humanitarian emergency the country continues to face due to political and economic crises” under President Nicolas Maduro’s regime.
“These conditions have contributed to high levels of crime and violence, impacting access to food, medicine, healthcare, water, electricity, and fuel,” the agency said.
Regarding El Salvador, DHS said that “environmental disasters” have brought about a temporary disruption of living conditions in the country and that the TPS was issued because of “geological and weather events, including significant storms and heavy rainfall” in 2024 and 2023 and an earthquake that hit more than 20 years ago.
Sudanese nationals in the TPS program will receive an extension because of “continued political instability that has triggered human rights abuses” caused by militia groups in recent years, the agency said.
Ukrainian nationals received a TPS extension in light of the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia, which erupted in February 2022.
About 1 million people from 17 countries living in the United States are protected by TPS, including people from Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Sudan, Ukraine, and Lebanon.
On Jan. 20, however, some of those protections could be rolled back as President-elect Donald Trump is due to take office. Both Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance have said they would scale down the program as they pursue mass deportations of illegal immigrants and other immigration-enforcement measures.
During the 2024 campaign, one of Trump’s major campaign promises was mass deportations and border security. He appointed Tom Homan, former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief, to be his border czar, and Homan has signaled in recent media interviews that the administration will quickly start deportation efforts targeting criminals and worksites.
