Temporary legal protections for about 200,000 immigrants from El Salvador was in limbo Wednesday as a deadline neared for the Trump administration to decide if they should end, as it has done for hundreds of thousands from Venezuela, Haiti and other countries.
The Temporary Protected Status designation expires Wednesday but the statute does not give a specific time for when that happens. If the Department of Homeland Security takes no action, protections are automatically extended for six months. This rare reprieve happened in May, when the protections were automatically extended to about 11,000 Lebanese, allowing them to stay and work in the U.S. for another 180 days.
