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NEW BEDFORD — Bells jangled briefly as the door to the Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores opened, just as Doris Landaverde took her place at the front of the room before 50 or so people.
Landaverde has spoken hundreds of times on Temporary Protected Status, a designation allowing people to remain in the U.S. if conditions in their homeland are unstable. But on this night, Aug. 26, the coordinator of the Massachusetts TPS Committee felt a new weight on her shoulders.
On Sept. 9, TPS for Salvadorans is set to end, leaving more than 170,000 people in the U.S. without status, including 7,354 living in Massachusetts. Some were at CCT that evening.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security “has yet to make any decision,” Landaverde told the group of mostly Salvadorans at the CCT in Spanish. “But prepare yourselves in case you have to leave.”
That uncertainty has wreaked mental havoc on the estimated 1,900 Salvadorans who live in New Bedford, many of them living with the status.
“People are very worried about whether or not their status will be renewed,” said Belgica Barrientos, president of the board of directors of the CCT, in Spanish. “This hits the community economically, psychologically, and our children.”
As Sept. 9, the final day of the protections, approaches, silence from the government has only served to amplify people’s fears. The Light arranged to speak with four local Salvadoran TPS holders over the course of reporting, but all backed out before an interview could take place.
Landaverde said that after 25 years of TPS, many Salvadorans who’ve worked and built families and live in the U.S. say the status “no longer feels temporary” to them. So the program’s impending termination is hitting them hard.
“I’m seeing that people are in despair,” she said.
History
TPS, which began in 1991, is granted at the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security. It protects residents of countries rendered unsafe due to conflict, natural disaster, or political instability.
El Salvador was the first country to receive the protections, due to the Central American nation’s civil war, which ended in 1993. In 2001, an earthquake there killed more than 900 people and triggered landslides that left over 5,500 injured amid widespread destruction, triggering a second TPS designation.
El Salvador could not regain its footing for decades as gangs — many of them birthed in U.S. prisons and exported there by deportations — rapidly grew in strength and became political players. By 2015, El Salvador was widely considered the most violent country in the world, with a murder rate of 106.3 homicides for every 100,000 people, according to a 2025 U.S. Congressional Report.
That instability led to continued renewals of TPS status after reviews of the country’s conditions. Each declaration can extend the status for six to 18 months. The last extension under the Biden administration was declared on Jan. 10, 2025, due to storm damage and worries that infrastructure could not provide access to food and clean water. It began on March 10, 2025.
But since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, his administration has removed the status for citizens of 11 countries, including Venezuelans, Syrians, and Haitians. Officials’ words in the courts and in public have left little doubt that they plan to remove TPS protections for more nationalities.
“Either try to fill out the paperwork and be here underneath a permanent status, or we’ll help you get back to your country,” said DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union in June. “Temporary protective status, according to the courts and in its name itself, is not permanent status.”
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the secretary’s decisions on TPS largely fall beyond the review of federal courts.
Uncertain future
Conditions have changed in El Salvador, but progress is precarious, according to Barrientos, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen and never had TPS herself.
“They say that our country is more secure — at least that’s what surveys say,” Barrientos said.
Since the 2015 highpoint, murder rates in El Salvador have fallen 98% to 1.9 homicides per 100,000 people by 2024. Many credit that to the nation’s current president, authoritarian strongman Nayib Bukele, who took office in 2019, and assumed emergency powers in 2022 that suspend key civil liberties. Critics say those statistics do not include violence committed by security forces in Bukele’s name.
Yet Barrientos says there is more to consider than questions of security and continuity. She pointed out that TPS has had economic benefits for the U.S. and El Salvador.
“Here, they’ve raised their families, worked their jobs, purchased property,” Barrientos said. “Thus, they’ve been able to support El Salvador’s economy.”
According to Fwd.us and the National TPS Alliance, Salvadoran TPS holders contribute $5.4 billion to the U.S. economy annually.
In 2025, close to 28% of El Salvador’s $37 billion gross domestic product was composed of remittances from abroad, according to The World Bank. The Massachusetts GDP was $644 billion that same year.
“[El Salvador] may be secure,” she said. “But it doesn’t have the economic capacity to take us in.”
Barrientos said forcing many people to go to a country they may have left as small children amounted to “a mental massacre.”
“After being here so long, people have gotten used to the culture over here,” Barrientos said. “Over there, people won’t be able to find a path forward and they’ll land in a country completely alien to them.”
On Aug. 12, and Sept. 3, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued updates for employers saying that Salvadorans with TPS and work permits would be allowed to continue working until Sept. 9.
Another announcement is expected Sept. 9.
When reached for comment, a spokesperson for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services referred The Light to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. DHS has not responded to a request for comment.
Continuing struggle
Landaverde said the near future seems bleak for Salvadoran TPS holders.
She said she is scared. As a TPS holder herself, she could find her legal status gone come Wednesday as well.
“It feels uncomfortable,” she said. “But I haven’t had much time to think about my circumstances. I’ve been too busy advocating.”
Last week, she returned from a trip to Washington, D.C., where she and other activists lobbied Congress to extend TPS for Salvadorans.
“Our stories have an impact,” she said. “People do listen to them.”
That’s especially true, she said, for the youth who accompanied the Massachusetts TPS Committee on the trip.
“The congressmen are almost never available and send their staff to meet with us,” she said. “But I’ve noticed that our youth are able to connect with the youth on staff.
“It gave me hope,” she concluded. “I saw that they were listening.”
Contact Kevin G. Andrade at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org
