Rina Valle, an immigrant from El Salvador, has been cleaning offices in downtown San Francisco for over a decade. But now, her stability is on the brink of collapse. Valle has Temporary Protected Status, which has allowed her to work legally in the United States since she arrived here 25 years ago. That status could expire in September and, with it, her right to legally remain here.
For now, Valle can continue her nightly job, collecting and disposing of the trash, recycling and compost inside the many offices of the East West Bank, an 18-story skyscraper in Chinatown.
If she loses her status, she said “It’s going to be a fear of not even wanting to go out, because you won’t be able to work, you won’t be able to pay for your things.”
“I have fought to be here, I have worked for almost 20 years, but I have nothing,” said Valle in Spanish.
Valle is among millions of immigrants whose status is in jeopardy or, worse still, newly illegal.
Until recently, they were the beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, a program that, under the Immigration Act of 1990, allowed people from countries in crisis to remain legally in the United States. That may soon be over.
While the Supreme Court ruling last month upheld the federal government’s authority to terminate TPS for citizens from Haiti and Syria, it also exposed the insecurity of immigrants from many other countries, including El Salvador, Venezuela and Ukraine. The Trump Administration has attempted to end TPS for people from 13 countries. Richard Boswell, a professor of immigration law who has been involved in the field since the 1980s, called the question over whether the administration can legally do this “a very technical legal wrangle and battle” between the Supreme Court and lower courts.
The Supreme court, Boswell says, is “giving the [Trump] administration free rein.” The lower courts, he said, are “not as inclined to so quickly take away rights.”
In practice that means some TPS beneficiaries can continue to work or even have their permits extended while varying lawsuits filed on behalf of TPS holders from different countries work their way through the courts.
This impacts more than a million TPS holders across the country and some 79,320 TPS holders in California as of March of last year, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service, published by the Library of Congress.
Most TPS programs have been terminated
Year TPS was designated
El Salvador (2011)
170,125 TPS holders
Venezuela (2023)
352,190 TPS holders
Ukraine (2022)
101,150 TPS holders
Ukraine
El Salvador
Active
Restored
Terminated
Haiti
(2010)
348,187 TPS holders
Honduras
(1999)
72,000 TPS holders
Venezuela (2021)
252,825 TPS holders
Year TPS was designated
El Salvador (2011)
170,125 TPS holders
Venezuela (2023)
352,190 TPS holders
Ukraine (2022)
101,150 TPS holders
Ukraine
El Salvador
Active
Restored
Terminated
Haiti
(2010)
348,187 TPS holders
Honduras
(1999)
72,000 TPS holders
Venezuela (2021)
252,825 TPS holders
Source:American Immigration Lawyers Association, National Immigration Forum and USCIS. Chart by Kelly Waldron.
Lawsuits challenging the terminations for some of the 17 countries with TPS designations, remain active in district courts, but the Supreme Court’s June 25 decision in Mullin v. Doe was a blow. It is likely only a matter of time before most of the TPS designations, which are unique for each country, are terminated.
When the Supreme Court makes a ruling, it addresses the legal question framed by the lawsuit — in this case, whether the federal government has the authority to end TPS when it was created by an act of Congress. According to the Supreme Court, the federal government does have that right. Now, the lower courts have to figure out the practical means of implementing that decision.
The impact of the ruling, however, has already been dramatic. In 2025 alone, more than 700,000 immigrants from countries such as Afghanistan, Cameroon, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have lost their TPS status in the United States because of terminations by the federal government.
Take the case of Jhony Silva Jr., a 30-year-old TPS holder from Honduras who has lived in the United States since he was three years old. Silva lost his legal status last September, when the federal government terminated his TPS status.
That resulted in the loss of his job as a nursing assistant at Stanford University. With it, Silva says he also lost his will to become a nurse, because he knows he cannot work legally. This has left the father of a 9-year-old son living at home with his parents without a stable job or the ability to get one.
“I just feel like a burden,” said Silva. He is a plaintiff in National TPS Alliance v. Noem, a case filed last November, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, in San Francisco, on behalf of TPS holders from Nicaragua, Honduras and Nepal.
Immigrants from other countries also remain in legal limbo. The expiration dates of work permits are updated periodically, depending on lawsuits in the lower courts. However, the Supreme Court decision will likely terminate the TPS status of most countries soon.
For the moment, however, some TPS holders continue to work with permits that remain in effect or are even extended.
A confusion of expiration dates
Lower court rulings have extended work permits for some, but not for all. “It has created a lot of panic, false hope and confusion,” said Reema Ghabra, an attorney at the Arab Resource and Organizing Center in San Francisco.
“It’s tearing families apart,” said Ghabra. She knows a Yemeni family in Oakland, where the father lost his TPS, while the mother retained hers. Their children, meanwhile, are U.S. citizens. Because the children are minors, they cannot apply to sponsor their parents, so the mixed-status family faces difficult decisions.
Some of Ghabra’s clients consider self-deporting, but many do not have lives in their home countries to go back to or fear violence and political unrest there. In this case, this family decided to stay and “hope for the best,” said Ghabra.
When families like this come to Ghabra looking for help, she said, there is often nothing she can do with the available legal tools.
Indeed, the gutting of the immigration system and constant changes has sowed such confusion that TPS holders, such as Abdullah Althawr, are not even sure when their work permits actually expire.
Althawr, a Yemeni engineering student who is transferring to San Francisco State in the fall, found out last week that he may be unable to continue working the graveyard shift as a security guard at Laney College, where he also attends school. According to an email from the security company he works for and shared with Mission Local, he has until September 3 to submit proof he is allowed to work legally.
“They announced TPS is terminated,” he said. “Is that a termination for my work authorization or not?”
Yemen’s TPS designation was set to expire on May 4, 2026, but a federal court in New York stayed that termination on May 1, keeping TPS holders’ status and work authorization valid while litigation continues, according to the U.S. Customs and Immigration Services. The agency lists July 17, 2026, as the current reference date for Yemeni TPS holders’ employment authorization — which is likely what led to his employer’s email.
But like immigrants’ personal lives, there’s nothing straightforward about their legal cases. Althawr, who arrived in the United States 14 years ago, also has a pending asylum application and is awaiting a court date. He checks the immigration court portal every day; court dates for asylum hearings have been known to change unexpectedly, too.
“If I am not going to be able to work, how will I pay rent, bills, car insurance? I don’t know what I am going to do,” said Althawr.
“Sometimes I dream they have taken me to the jail, to the prison, and I feel so scared,” he added.
The termination of TPS “is cutting me off from all my dreams.”
