As TPS Deadline Nears, Salvadoran Families Brace for a Decision That Could Upend Everything They Know

José Palma tracks the uncertainty hanging over his Houston household by what his family has stopped buying. He and his wife shelved plans for a backyard shed and a pool for their two youngest kids. They're holding onto an old car, skipping restaurants except for special occasions, and weighing whether to pull their son off the soccer team he's played on for years.

None of it is because Palma lost his job. It's because he doesn't know how much longer he'll be allowed to keep it.

Palma, national coordinator of the National TPS Alliance, has lived and worked legally in the U.S. for 25 years under Temporary Protected Status. That protection for El Salvador could lapse in the coming weeks, leaving him and roughly 170,000 others unsure whether they can keep paying mortgages, supporting their kids, or investing in a country where many have built lives across nearly three decades.

Palma crossed into the U.S. without authorization in 1998, at 22, driven north by the aftermath of El Salvador's civil war. People ask him if he's planning to go back. His answer: "Mi vida es aquí en los Estados Unidos" — his life is here.

USCIS notified TPS holders on August 12 that their protections are set to expire September 9. But federal law requires DHS to decide on a designation at least 60 days out, and a termination taking effect on the 9th would have required a Federal Register notice in July — which never came. That procedural gap leaves families like Palma's waiting on official word that hasn't arrived.

Despite DHS's pattern of quietly rolling over designations at the last minute — as it did with Lebanon earlier this year — Salvadoran TPS holders aren't banking on relief. The administration has already ended TPS for 13 of the 17 countries that held it when Trump returned to office, and a June Supreme Court ruling narrowed courts' power to review these decisions. Eighty House Democrats and, separately, more than 270 faith leaders have pressed DHS to extend the status rather than send people back to what they describe as dangerous conditions.

For Palma, the strain isn't new — just sharper. Every 18 months, as El Salvador's designation came up for renewal over the years, he says he felt "una tembladita en el corazón," a small trembling of the heart. His wife, a permanent resident, petitioned for his green card years ago; the application remains stuck because of his unauthorized entry. He says recipients would have pursued another path long ago if one existed — nobody wants to live not knowing what happens to their future.

"Until we get an announcement from the government," Palma said, "there's no telling what will happen."