Biden Extends Migrant Protections Ahead of Appeals Court Fight

The Department of Homeland Security is extending deportation protections and work authorization for more than a quarter million Central American and Asian immigrants who faced losing that relief under the Trump administration.

The agency on Tuesday announced the extension of Temporary Protected Status designations for nationals of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Nepal. The extension stops short of a re-designation that immigrant advocates were seeking, which would have expanded protections to more recent arrivals from those countries.

Eligibility criteria, timelines, and steps for current recipients to renew work permits will be explained in forthcoming Federal Register notices, DHS said. The extension applies to individuals continuously residing in the US since Feb. 13, 2001, for El Salvador; Dec. 30, 1998, for Honduras and Nicaragua; and June 24, 2015, for Nepal.

DHS said the decision was relevant to litigation, set for oral arguments before the full US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in a little over a week, challenging the 2018 attempts to cancel the protections, which have been in place for years.

Settlement negotiations between the Biden administration and immigrant advocates broke down last year, reigniting the legal fight to maintain TPS. The extensions could make that litigation moot. CBS News first reported the extensions announced Tuesday.

The Biden administration has added or extended TPS designations to 16 total countries. Last year alone the department added new protections for migrants from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Liberia, and Ethiopia, while extending existing protections for those from Syria and Myanmar.

More TPS recipients come from El Salvador—more than 241,000 in 2021—than any other country, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Temporary Protected Status offers temporary relief and work permits for foreign nationals living in the US when conditions such as armed conflict or natural disasters make it unsafe to return to their home countries. The designations must be renewed every 18 months, although they’ve typically been renewed for affected countries.

DHS had already extended TPS designations for Haiti and Sudan, countries that were originally part of the litigation slated for oral arguments at the Ninth Circuit June 22. The appeals court in February had vacated a previous ruling from a three-judge panel that the case should be remanded to a district court.

Immigration advocates—including a coalition of faith groups and employers launched last year—called on Congress to pass permanent protections for TPS recipients as part of incremental immigration legislation.

Even after the DHS announcement, TPS advocates say the fight is far from over for families covered by the relief. José Palma, a TPS recipient and spokesperson for the National TPS Alliance, said in a statement Tuesday that protections targeted by the Trump administration should have been restored by President Joe Biden on his first day in office. Instead, migrants “endured two years of uncertainty while we battled in courts, demonstrated in streets, and made our case within a dysfunctional congress,” Palma said.

The group also called on the administration to acknowledge that TPS recipients’ constitutional rights were violated, and to take steps to facilitate permanent residency for them in the US.