What changed
El Salvador first. In January 2025 the government extended El Salvador’s TPS for 18 months, through September 9, 2026 (90 FR 5953). That date has now passed, and no new Federal Register notice has extended or terminated the designation as of this writing. Instead, USCIS’s TPS pages carry this alert: “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 including work authorization.” The El Salvador page also says USCIS sent notices extending TPS-based work permits (category A12 or C19) through September 9, 2026.
The bigger change is a court ruling. On June 25, 2026, the Supreme Court decided Mullin v. Doe, two cases about the terminations for Syria and Haiti. The question was whether people challenging those terminations could get orders postponing them during the lawsuits. The Court’s answer: “We hold that they are not.” It read the TPS statute’s line, “There is no judicial review of any determination of the [Secretary of Homeland Security] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state,” to bar every non-constitutional claim, and it found the equal-protection claim about Haiti unlikely to succeed. The opinion notes the Secretary “has terminated every TPS designation that has come up for renewal, 13 in all.”
After that decision, USCIS updated its alerts with effective dates. It now lists Haiti and Syria as terminated effective July 27, 2026; Yemen effective July 20, 2026; South Sudan and Burma (Myanmar) effective August 7, 2026; Somalia effective August 14, 2026; and Ethiopia effective August 18, 2026. Somalia is the case in one of our shorts. The termination notice was published January 14, 2026 (91 FR 1547), set to take effect March 17, 2026, and DHS estimated “1,082 current approved beneficiaries.” A lawsuit in Massachusetts, African Communities Together v. Noem, No. 26-cv-11201, had held the termination up with an administrative stay; the First Circuit’s August 3, 2026 judgment records that the district court had said that stay would be dissolved once the case came back to it, and USCIS lists the termination as effective August 14. An appeal by the plaintiffs was docketed at the First Circuit on August 17, 2026.
The third short is about work permits, and it is a different case. In Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts v. USCIS, No. 26-13038, TPS holders challenged a one-year cap on TPS work permits that would have ended previously extended permits, including many held by Salvadorans, as early as July 22, 2026. On July 21, 2026, Judge Nathaniel Gorton entered an administrative stay of the “retroactive application of EAD expiration deadlines, meaning that any EAD previously extended shall maintain its prior expiration date.” That is the “judge blocks” headline. On August 5, 2026, the same judge ruled on the full motion and denied it as to the work-permit policies: “With respect to all other challenged policies, the motion is DENIED.” He found the cap restates a 2025 statute. The block on work permits therefore lasted from July 21 to August 5. The case is on appeal.
Who this is about
Per USCIS’s own list, five countries are “currently designated” for TPS: El Salvador, Lebanon, Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela. Lebanon’s designation was automatically extended for six months, through November 27, 2026. Venezuela’s entry is not what the list makes it look like: USCIS says the Supreme Court allowed the termination of the 2023 designation to take effect on October 3, 2025, that the 2021 designation was terminated effective November 7, 2025, and that TPS-related documents issued on or before February 5, 2025 with an October 2, 2026 expiration date remain valid until that date under a May 30, 2025 district court order.
For Honduras and Nicaragua, USCIS says both designations “terminated on Sept. 8, 2025.” A judge in the Northern District of California vacated those terminations on December 31, 2025, but on February 9, 2026 the Ninth Circuit stayed that order, and the Honduras page now reads “TPS for Honduras is terminated.” The page was last updated February 11, 2026 and does not describe anything after the Supreme Court’s June ruling.
What the sources do not say matters as much. USCIS does not say when the El Salvador announcement will come, or what it will be. The Supreme Court did not itself terminate any designation; it decided what courts may review. The Somalia notice says that when a designation ends, people “return to the same immigration status or category that they maintained before Temporary Protected Status, if any,” and it does not describe any individual’s situation.
What it does not mean
- It does not mean El Salvador’s TPS has been extended. There is no new Federal Register notice. USCIS’s statement is that protection and work authorization continue “until such announcement is made.”
- It does not mean the Somalia ruling reaches Salvadorans or anyone else. Somalia’s termination rests on its own notice, and the alert about El Salvador is separate and current.
- It does not mean the July 21 work-permit order is still in force. That was an administrative stay; the August 5 ruling denied relief on the work-permit policies. Current work-permit dates come from USCIS’s own notices, such as the September 9, 2026 date for El Salvador.
- It does not mean the Supreme Court closed every courthouse door. The opinion bars non-constitutional claims and found one equal-protection claim unlikely to succeed; it did not rule on the facts of any country other than Syria and Haiti.
What to do with this
If you or a family member has TPS from El Salvador, or from any country on the terminated list, the dates above are the ones to write down, and the El Salvador alert is the one to check again, because USCIS has said an announcement is coming. What any of it means for one person’s record, including work-permit expiration dates and what status someone held before TPS, is a question for a licensed immigration attorney or a DOJ-accredited representative. The organizations below are a place to start, and every city page on this directory lists more.
Advocasí is not a law firm. We explain what a policy says and help people prepare their own paperwork once a qualified advisor has told them which path applies.