Fate of thousands of Marylanders from El Salvador uncertain as Trump mulls pulling protection

More than 20,000 Maryland residents are facing an uncertain future as the Trump administration weighs the cancelation of a longstanding program for some immigrants from El Salvador.

For decades, Temporary Protected Status has allowed people from designated countries to remain in the U.S. while their home countries recover from extraordinary circumstances, like a natural disaster or armed conflict. It’s initially granted for 18 months, but federal officials have extended the protection for Salvadorans continuously since 2001 as gang violence worsened across the small Central American nation.

The latest extension is set to expire Wednesday, though federal rules mandate that the protection won’t end until the Department of Homeland Security issues a formal termination notice, which it has yet to do.

In an email Tuesday evening, DHS issued a statement saying an announcement regarding TPS for El Salvador is coming, and that the protection remains until such announcement. The statement did not offer a timeline for any decision.

The uncertainty has left 170,000 Salvadoran TPS holders waiting for a resolution, including roughly 23,000 in Maryland, who could soon be eligible for deportation after decades living in the U.S.

President Donald Trump has ended TPS for more countries than any other president, according to the Pew Research Center, arguing that the conditions in each country no longer warranted it and that repeated extensions turned TPS into a de facto “amnesty” program. Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to follow through with terminating TPS for Haiti and Syria.

Salvadorans are the largest immigrant population in Maryland, according to state reports, and about 16% of them are TPS holders. To receive TPS, a Salvadoran must have lived in the U.S. continuously since the original designation in 2001.

“You have people that are worried, that are anxious, that are afraid. You have people that are angry, sad. It’s just a variety of emotions,” said Alex Vazquez, director of organizing in Maryland for We Are CASA, the largest immigration advocacy organization in the state.

TPS does not provide a pathway to citizenship. If the estimated 170,000 affected Salvadorans still hope to remain in the U.S., they would need to pursue lawful status through other means like asylum, employer sponsorship or a petition from a U.S. citizen relative.

“We’re in the midst of the biggest de-legalization program in U.S. history,” said immigration attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg.

In addition to detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants, the second Trump administration has also stripped the legal status of millions more, putting them at increased risk of forcible removal. Since last year, Homeland Security has revoked the legal standing of hundreds of thousands who entered the U.S. under Biden-era parole programs as well as allowing TPS to expire for more than a dozen countries including Haiti.

Such rescissions have placed roughly 2 million people previously in the U.S. legally at new risk of deportation, David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, said during a congressional hearing last week.

Salvadorans began emigrating from their country in large numbers in the late 1970s and ’80s amid the eruption of a deadly civil war. Many settled in the Capital Region, eventually dotting the Maryland suburbs of Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties with pupuserías and other signs of a lively diaspora.

Today, about 100,000 Salvadorans call Montgomery and Prince George’s counties home, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

After at least 25 years living in the area, many TPS holders are homeowners and business owners, and work in critical industries like construction, Sandoval-Moshenberg said. Salvadoran TPS holders contribute $732 million to Maryland’s economy each year, according to advocates at FWD.us, a national policy organization that has pursued immigration reform.

Terminating TPS for El Salvador will “be like D-day for this area,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.

“They live, breathe and touch everything we interact with on a daily basis,” said Vazquez. “This is going to have a tremendous impact on our local economy.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen said it’s outrageous for the Trump administration to target this group who are in the country under a legal status and regularly submit to background checks.

Van Hollen tried to pass a bill blocked by Republicans in the Senate that would have created a pathway to legal permanent residency for TPS holders. Should Democrats take control of Congress after the midterms, he said, they’ll continue a push to pass it.

Congress first created TPS in 1990, and El Salvador was the first country designated. El Salvador’s initial designation ended in 1992 after a peace agreement ended their civil war.

Then, in 2001, the U.S. reopened TPS for Salvadorans in the wake of two massive earthquakes in the span of a month. After multiple extensions, Trump tried to end it during his first stint in the White House, an effort a federal judge ultimately blocked.

More violence increasingly gripped the nation as it was rebuilding from both the civil war and the earthquakes. Brutal gangs like MS-13, which originated in Los Angeles, California, and then took root in El Salvador after members were deported there, became omnipresent, forcing more people to leave and seek safety.

Country conditions have dramatically changed since the inauguration of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, who has led a popular yet brutal crackdown on gangs that endeared him to U.S. conservative figures. Trump held a private meeting with Bukele at the White House in July, according to pool reports.