Dhs Was Set To End Tps For El Salvador. Then The White House Stepped In.

The Department of Homeland Security had greenlit a notice ending temporary legal protections for roughly 200,000 Salvadorans this month. The White House hit the brakes, according to an administration official and three other people close to the administration.

The back and forth, which has not been previously reported, underscores the crosscurrents the administration is attempting to navigate five weeks ahead of an election in which some of President Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters fear he has gone soft, while many independents and Hispanic Trump voters insist he’s gone too far.

The case of El Salvador has highlighted those tensions pitting business interests against immigration hardliners amid the backdrop of a hotly contested Senate race in Texas, which has the second-largest Salvadoran population in the United States.

The program had been set to end three weeks ago if it wasn’t extended — so far the administration has punted that decision. DHS and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had cleared a termination notice to be published in the Federal Register, and the abrupt halt from the White House took some inside DHS by surprise, according to an administration official and three other people close to the administration.

“It just came down from the White House,” said Mark Krikorian who leads the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank in Washington that favors restrictions on legal immigration and greater immigration enforcement. “They may just be thinking, let’s make this go away for six months until after the election, not because it’s going to have any direct effect on the election. They just don’t want the news stories about this.”

The White House referred questions to DHS. A DHS spokesperson shared the same statement from earlier this month, saying an announcement will be “made at an appropriate time,” and until then, “Salvadoran individuals present in the U.S. under TPS retain protection.”

The election is only one challenge the Trump administration is navigating.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, an ally of President Donald Trump, has lobbied the U.S. to keep the protections. The cash Salvadoran immigrants send back home is crucial for the nation’s economy.

Many Salvadorans have had the protections for 25 years. Thousands of immigrants have children and grandchildren who are citizens. They are woven into the business and politics of local communities, and employers have also pushed the White House to refrain from eliminating TPS, which would strip thousands of employees of their work status in an already tight labor market.

“Texas has the second-largest Salvadoran population next to Los Angeles, and in terms of just how long this population’s been around, these are employees connected to some very high-level donors and business leaders that have reached out to the president and senior officials,” said a fourth person close to the administration.

Meanwhile, hardliners argue that conditions in El Salvador have improved, citing the State Department’s travel advisory for the country is currently at its safest rating, Level 1. They point out that El Salvador has encouraged some migrants to return to fill labor shortages and has offered financial and travel incentives for TPS holders to return.

They also note the delay is an outlier for an administration that has aggressively revoked temporary protected status and humanitarian parole for hundreds of thousands of immigrants. One of the people close to the administration said the delay is indicative of “tension within the White House about what to do.” And no matter the decision, the person said, it will be “unpopular with somebody no matter what.”

“The politics of it go both ways. There’s a perception that if [Trump] were to let them stay, that that would somehow have some kind of political benefit for some Republican candidate somewhere, or for him?” the person said. “On the other hand, it’s also contributing to the frustration with some people on the more hawkish side for enforcement that the president’s gone soft.”

The administration’s silence on El Salvador has thrown the immigrant community into limbo. It’s been almost three weeks since the expiration date for Salvadorans came and went with neither an extension nor a termination. Instead, the USCIS website says an announcement be made at an “appropriate time,” as Salvadorans anxiously refresh the Federal Register.

The president ended temporary protected status for more than a dozen countries, though TPS for El Salvador, Lebanon, Sudan, Ukraine and some immigrants from Venezuela remain active. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin automatically extended TPS for Lebanon this spring for six months, with the agency saying Mullin had not had adequate time to review the country’s designation. The notice also cited tensions in the region due to the war with Iran.

Some Venezuelans remain protected under a federal court order, with the current extension scheduled to expire Oct. 2. Expiration dates are also approaching for Sudan and Ukraine on Oct. 19.

Some battleground Republicans have warned that the administration’s revocation of temporary legal pathways for law-abiding immigrants, including TPS and humanitarian parole, has contributed to negative sentiment among Latino voters who feel a sense of betrayal. A poll from the American Business Immigration Coalition, conducted by BSP Research and Shaw & Co. this month, found that 76% of Hispanic voters in swing states — Texas, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania — preferred candidates calling for permanent legal status for long-term unauthorized immigrants who have been working and paying taxes in the U.S.

And new results from The POLITICO poll found that most Americans believe people convicted of serious violent or sexual offenses should be prioritized for deportation, but few support calls for targeting other groups, including people convicted of minor criminal offenses. Support dips further when voters are asked about prioritizing people who have lived in the U.S. for several years without legal status or people with dependent children in the U.S.

The administration’s sweeping efforts to end TPS have already rippled through economic sectors, including in red states. Some farm-state senators, including the surprisingly vulnerable Roger Marshall, have expressed concern that ICE raids have disrupted meatpacking plants. And groups representing ranchers and meatpackers are upset with the administration’s immigration enforcement efforts, saying ICE arrests and the resulting fear rippling through communities has cost them millions of dollars in revenue.

“These are examples of states where there is an aging white population. They do not have people who can go work in slaughterhouses in the cattle industry in Kansas,” said Matt Barreto, who conducted polling for former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign. “So it is an increasingly important part of their economies, and to go around and having these raids of people who are working, it doesn’t solve anything, and it certainly doesn’t make prices and inflation better.”