- El Salvador's Temporary Protected Status is listed as expiring Sept. 9, 2026, closing out the longest-running TPS program in U.S. history, but DHS has not published the Federal Register notice the law requires to make that termination official.
- Federal statute obligated Secretary Markwayne Mullin to announce a renew-or-end decision by July 11, 2026; missing that deadline may trigger an automatic six-month extension under the TPS law, according to immigration attorneys and reporting this month.
- The Supreme Court's June 25 ruling in Mullin v. Doe stripped courts of most power to block TPS terminations — but that case addressed only Haiti and Syria, leaving El Salvador's situation legally distinct.
- A separate Massachusetts federal court fight over shortened work permits for Salvadoran, Ukrainian and Sudanese TPS holders remains open, after a judge declined in August to keep blocking the policy.
More than 170,000 Salvadorans could lose their legal footing to work in the United States as the clock runs out Wednesday, yet the federal notice required to actually terminate that protection has never been filed. Employer-facing alerts from USCIS and its sister platform E-Verify instruct businesses to log September 9 as the cutoff date for Temporary Protected Status tied to El Salvador, even though no termination order has appeared in the Federal Register, the government's official publication of record.
