Scheduled end of protected status for Salvadoran immigrants draws fire from Utah advocates

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

The scheduled end of the federal initiative granting certain Salvadoran immigrations temporary protect status is prompting concern among Utah advocates.
Protected status for Venezuelans and many others has already been eliminated as part of the federal crackdown on illegal immigration.
Some 2,000 Salvadorans in Utah benefit from protected status.

SALT LAKE CITY — A program that has allowed around 170,000 Salvadorans around the United States to live and work in the country is set to come to an end on Wednesday, which has prompted consternation in the community here in Utah.

The looming end date, though, doesn't necessarily mean those impacted will be returning to the Central American country anytime soon.

"The truth is, people don't want to return to their country because they already have a life here. In El Salvador, the economy isn't good," said Gladis Rodriguez, originally from El Salvador but now living in Utah and leader of a Central American cultural group, the Salvadoran and Latino Community In Utah. "Some are day laborers, some have businesses. ... They're afraid, and they don't want to leave."

At the same time, the federal government issued a statement to KSL suggesting the end of the temporary protected status designation for eligible Salvadorans isn't necessarily a sure thing, not yet at least.

"An announcement on El Salvador's TPS will be made at the appropriate time. Until such announcement is made, Salvadoran individuals present in the U.S. under TPS retain protection," reads Tuesday's short statement to KSL from the Department of Homeland Security. Federal guidance posted online last week, by contrast, states that TPS protections for Salvadorans end on Wednesday.

As part of the federal crackdown on illegal immigration, the administration of President Donald Trump has been ending programs granting certain immigrants temporary protected status, or TPS, which allows recipients to remain and work in the country, protected from deportation. TPS protections for eligible Haitians ended on July 27 and, at least according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website, TPS protections for some 170,000 Salvadorans around the country are to end on Wednesday.

South Jordan immigration attorney Carlos Trujillo represents some of the impacted Salvadorans, and he had critical words for the change. Around 20,000 Salvadorans and people of Salvadoran descent in all lived in Utah as of 2024, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the third-largest Latino subgroup in the state after those with Mexican and Venezuelan roots. According to MomsRising in Utah, which protested the dismantling of TPS programs at the Utah Capitol last April, around 2,000 of the 20,000 have TPS status.

"A lot of these people already have U.S. citizen children. A lot of these people own property. A lot of these people own their businesses, so they've been operating their businesses for years in our state or across the nation," Trujillo said. He acknowledged that the TPS initiatives are meant to be temporary, but "just coming and taking it away without having any regard for the family, for the lives that have been built in this country, that is where the problem really is."

TPS programs are meant to temporarily help people from countries experiencing armed conflicts and natural disasters. The Trump Administration has argued that conditions in many of the countries of the TPS beneficiaries have improved, rendering the programs unneeded.

Presuming the Salvadoran TPS program ends, Ysabel Lonazco, a West Valley City-based immigration attorney, suspects impacted Salvadorans will face a similar sort of process that unfolded with the end of the Haitian TPS initiative in July.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials "started calling people to come to their office to check in and they would put ankle monitors on them or some sort of supervision," Lonazco said, referencing the aftermath of the Haitian TPS program. The aim, she said, is to get a clearer idea of the TPS population "and then after the supervision is established, potentially initiate removal proceedings."

She thinks some of the impacted Salvadorans will have other means to legally remain in the country but advised those with questions to seek legal help. Like Trujillo, she also had tough words for the end of the TPS program, given how long Salvadoran TPS recipients have been in the United States, since at least 2001. That's when federal officials created the TPS designation for El Salvador in the wake of two devastating earthquakes in the nation that year.

"It's humiliating. You've been granted this protection for so many years," she said. Many have obeyed the law, made the United States their home, only to face the seeming potential for detention and deportation if they stay after Wednesday.

Trujillo noted that to retain TPS status, recipients may not have any felony convictions on their records or more than one misdemeanor. That requirement in the face of the dismantling of TPS initiatives, to him, underscores what he views as the hypocrisy of the Trump administration's contention that the immigration crackdown is focused on criminal immigrants.

"This is not an attack on the criminal immigrant. This is an attack on immigration in general, legal or illegal. They don't care, and they're going after any and all immigrants," Trujillo said.

As of March 31, 2025, nearly 1.3 million immigrants across the United States from a broad range of countries, including El Salvador, had TPS status, including 20,100 in Utah, according to a federal report from August of that year. As of last month that 1.3 million total had fallen by 1.04 million, according to the Pew Research Center, with the elimination of TPS programs for Haiti and Venezuela, which accounted for 951,000 of the total, and several other countries.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.