Temporary Protected Status: De Facto Amnesty

Fact Sheet - Tuesday, December 2, 2025

Federal Agency Oversight: USCIS
Dependents: Same

The Basics:

• Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was created by Congress in the 1990 Immigration Act and can be found at 8 U.S.C. 1254a.
• The Secretary of Homeland Security (originally, the Attorney General) may designate a country for TPS due to the following temporary conditions in the country:
• Ongoing armed conflict (such as civil war);
• An environmental disaster (such as earthquake or hurricane), or an epidemic; or
• Other extraordinary and temporary conditions.
• The idea behind TPS is to provide temporary relief from removal for aliens already in the United States where return to their country is unsafe due to changed, temporary conditions. 
• TPS requires both that the conditions in a country (or parts of a country) and the status in the United States are temporary. Persistent conditions such as poverty or crime cannot be cured by temporary status, and so cannot be used to designate a country for TPS.
• TPS designations are discretionary. A country can meet the statutory requirements for eligibility and still be denied a designation. 
• The nationals of a designated country are eligible for TPS if they have resided continuously in the United States since the effective date of the designation. The law does not specify whether that continuous residence needs to be lawful (i.e., present on a temporary visa, such as a work or tourist visa), which has resulted in illegal aliens being the primary beneficiaries of TPS designations. Aliens entering the United States after the effective date are ineligible unless the country is redesignated.
• Aliens granted TPS are protected from removal, authorized for employment for the duration of TPS status, and can receive travel authorization (even to the country they claim to be unable to return to). 
• TPS designations are statutorily allowed to last from six to 18 months, but can be extended indefinitely.
• The Biden Administration created a major loophole in TPS by routinely “redesignating” countries for TPS, rather than simply extending the initial designation. This was done specifically to expand the population of eligible aliens by moving up the date by which the aliens had to have resided in the United States, so that those who arrived (often illegally) after the effective date of the original designation would be eligible under the redesignation. This loophole made clear that TPS was being used purely as a political tool to give a larger pool of aliens the ability to live and work here, since the redesignation was decoupled from the event used to justify the original designation.
• By law, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is required to review country conditions 60 days before expiration of TPS and determine if the designation is still warranted under the law. If DHS does not make an affirmative decision on renewal, the designation is automatically extended by six months. Depending on country conditions, a TPS designation can be terminated or extended by up to 18 months at the discretion of DHS. 
• The Trump Administration is moving to terminate TPS designations for:
• Honduras
• Nicaragua
• Haiti
• Venezuela  

The Problem:

• TPS has become effectively a permanent status as the nationals of some countries have had TPS status for decades.
• El Salvador: 24 years 
• Somalia: 34 years
• Honduras: 26 years
• Haiti: 15 years
• TPS serves as a pull factor for illegal immigration from designated countries, particularly since the Biden Administration began redesignating program countries.
• The United States issues temporary work and visitor visas to nationals of designated countries with the expectation they will return home when the visa expires, despite simultaneously claiming it is unsafe for others of that nationality to return home. Moreover, the United States actively deports aliens to TPS countries all the time, undermining the claim that it is unsafe for nationals to return to those countries. 
• The ability to redesignate to expand eligibility coupled with statutory autopilot for extensions has made TPS a de facto amnesty program. Once a country is designated, that designation often is extended long after the conditions that caused the determination are resolved. 
• This creates opportunities for abuse as plainly demonstrated during the Biden Administration. According to the Pew Research Center, “Since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, his administration has greatly expanded the number of immigrants who are eligible for TPS.” Pew estimated that nearly 1.2 million aliens were eligible for TPS under the Biden Administration, roughly doubling the eligible population in just four years. 

LEGISLATIVE RECOMMENDATION: 8 U.S.C. 1254a should be amended to give Congress exclusive authority to designate or renew TPS. Illegal aliens should be prohibited from receiving TPS. The nationals of countries designated for TPS should be ineligible for any nonimmigrant visas, since it is clearly not safe for them to return home upon the expiration of these temporary visas. Otherwise the program should be terminated entirely.

ADMINISTRATIVE RECOMMENDATION: TPS country conditions should be closely monitored both for whether the conditions that warranted designation still exist, and if they do still exist then whether those conditions are, in fact, temporary. There should be a presumption of termination after 18 months of TPS status, absent extraordinary circumstances. There should also be better vetting of TPS applicants to ensure eligibility and to establish whether applicants are lawfully present in the United States.