The Biden administration on Friday extended temporary humanitarian protections for about 230,000 Salvadorans and 600,000 Venezuelans living in the US, in an effort to shield those groups from an incoming Trump administration that has promised to deport them.
The decision in the dying days of Joe Biden’s presidency came after immigrant advocates and lawmakers urged the Department of Homeland Security to extend temporary protected status (TPS), designed to protect immigrants from being deported to countries that are engulfed in disaster or conflict.
DHS cited environmental conditions in El Salvador – which in recent times has been hit by a series of extreme weather events – which “prevent individuals from returning” to the country. The agency extended protections for Venezuelans “based on the severe humanitarian emergency the country continues to face due to political and economic crises”, the department said.
The announcement came as Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro was sworn in for a third term in Caracas, despite widespread domestic and international condemnation over his alleged engineering of a fraudulent election victory and his leading the country in an increasingly repressive direction since he took office in 2013.
The US announced a $65m bounty for Maduro’s arrest and the arrests of two close allies on international drug-trafficking charges, and rejected Maduro’s claim to the presidency.
About a million immigrants from 17 countries are protected by TPS, including people from Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Sudan and Lebanon. Salvadorans are one of the largest beneficiaries, having won TPS in 2001 after earthquakes rocked the Central American country.
The TPS designation gives people legal authority to be in the country but doesn’t provide a long-term path to citizenship. People with TPS are reliant on the government renewing their status when it expires.
Donald Trump and JD Vance, his vice-president-elect, suggested during their election campaign that they would scale back the use of TPS and policies granting temporary status as they pursued a campaign pledge of mass deportations. During his first administration, Trump ended TPS for El Salvador, but the process was held up in court.
Advocates have stepped up pressure on Biden to ask for TPS extensions for those who already have it, and to protect people from some other countries, including Guatemala and Ecuador.
“This extension is just a small victory,” said Felipe Arnoldo Díaz, an activist with the National TPS Alliance. “Our biggest concern is that after El Salvador, there are countries whose TPS are expiring soon and are being left out, like Venezuela, Nepal, Sudan, Nicaragua and Honduras”.
In March 2022, El Salvador’s gangs killed 62 people in hours, prompting its congress to allow a “state of exception” for the president, Nayib Bukele, to crack down, suspending some constitutional rights and granting more police powers. More than 83,000 people have been arrested since then, with most being jailed without due process.
El Salvador ended 2024 with a record low 114 homicides. In 2015, El Salvador had 6,656 homicides, making it one of the world’s deadliest countries.
For José Palma, a 48-year-old Salvadoran who has lived in the US since 1998, the extension means he can still work legally in Houston. He is the only person in his family with temporary status; his four children were born in the US and are citizens, and his wife is a permanent resident. If TPS had not been extended, he could have been deported.
“It brings me peace of mind, a breath of fresh air. That’s 18 more months of being protected,” Palma said. “It offers me stability.”
Palma works as an organizer at a day-laborer organization and sends home about $400 a month to support his 73-year-old mother.
The Associated Press contributed reporting