More than one million people in the United States benefit from Temporary Protected Status (TPS).1 Moreover, temporary protected status is granted when conditions in various countries temporarily prevent their nationals from returning safely, or, in certain circumstances, when the government is unable to adequately handle the return of its nationals.2
The Secretary of Homeland Security designates which countries qualify for this protected status.3 When considering country conditions, the Secretary may designate a country for TPS due to a number of atrocities.4 Individuals who are TPS beneficiaries or preliminarily found eligible for TPS upon initial review of their cases are not removable from the United States, may obtain an employment authorization document (EAD), and may be granted travel authorization.5 Once granted TPS, an individual cannot be detained by DHS based on their immigration status in the United States.6
Still, in light of these privileges, it is essential to note that Temporary Protected Status is true to its name: it is a temporary benefit with no possibility of ripening into lawful permanent residence or any other immigration status.7 Although an individual may apply for other non-immigrant statuses or immigration benefits, they must separately meet all eligibility requirements for those benefits.8 In turn, TPS beneficiaries work, travel, and build lives in the United States, understanding that they risk losing everything.
This risk became a reality for Diana Orellana, a single mother of two and grandmother.9 Diana came to the U.S. from Honduras more than 25 years ago fleeing domestic violence, poverty, and crime.10 Despite the trauma inflicted on her by her home country, Ms. Orellana, upon coming to the United States, not only cared for her family but also established a career in healthcare.11
Nevertheless, in July of 2025, the Department of Homeland Security stated that, with “improved conditions” in Honduras, DHS was planning to end TPS for Hondurans.12 However, for Hondurans in the United States, these “improved conditions” are a falsehood. As Ms. Orellana states, “The Department of Homeland Security says Honduras has improved conditions ... no! Not at all ...” (McLister, 2025).13 Aside from the risks of returning for all Hondurans, Ms. Orellana also faces the cruel reality of personal abuse if she returns, as she states, “the person who violated me is still there. What's going to happen?”14
Ms. Orellana is not the only one asking this question; many TPS beneficiaries are held in a state of vulnerability with the ebbs and flows of DHS determinations15 The case of Diana Orellana illustrates the risks of return for TPS beneficiaries across the United States. While trying to figure out what the future holds, Ms. Orellana states, “How can you pack your life in two weeks, two months ... how can you pick up everything?”16 With one statement, DHS pulled Ms. Orellana away from the life she created despite the abuse and hardships she endured. Ms. Orellana is not alone.
In March of 2025, 51,225 Hondurans held Temporary Protected Status in the United States.17 Now, each of these individuals must close the door on the lives they created. The revocation of TPS status for Honduras is one to consider and fear for other individuals who hold TPS. As of March 2025, excluding Hondurans, there are 1,246,410 TPS beneficiaries in the United States.18 With one statement from the Department of Homeland Security, over a million people can be subjected to the same cruel reality as Ms. Orellana. One day, you are building a family and a life, and with one statement, DHS can have you returning to a place that is no longer home.
Accordingly, this article focuses on the fluctuating positionality of individuals who benefit from TPS in the United States, and examines the United States' obligations to continue, expand, and find alternatives to TPS.
“How long can I stay?”
DHS has a history of arbitrarily determining which states qualify for, or do not qualify for, temporary protection. For example, Montserrat illustrates the arbitrariness of the determination process.19 The island had been evacuated due to volcanic activity and the destruction it caused.20 Despite the volcano’s devastation and ongoing effects on the island, DHS terminated Montserrat's designation on February 27, 2005.21 To further exemplify the ongoing threats to the nationals from that region, when TPS was terminated in Montserrat, the nation had no airport.22 Additionally, the country was still deemed an unsafe place to live.23 Despite the clear humanitarian crisis of the nation, “nationals of Montserrat were thrown out of a country they had lived in for eight years and were not even able to fly home because there was no open airport at which they could safely land.”24
TPS is frequently terminated even when the designated region remains unstable or unsafe for its nationals.25 As exemplified by Diana Orellana's story in the introduction to this text, the inability of beneficiaries to track the logic and trajectory of their status is a significant source of stress and fear for immigrants and their futures in the United States.
The Mental Health Impacts on Beneficiaries and Their Families
Immigration limbo is a fear that transcends the issue of TPS. For example, detention and deportation also affect the health outcomes of those in limbo, leading to higher rates of “depression, anxiety, stress, somatic symptoms, anger, low self-esteem, and behavioral problems.”26 These mental health impacts of possessing a fluctuating legal status are not isolated to those directly affected but also affect their families and children. More specifically, individuals living in limbo tend to “isolate themselves and their children from the community, which can negatively affect their children’s development.”27 Not only is social integration and community limited, but so is education – fearing family separation leads parents in fluctuating or unstable immigration statuses to want to keep their children at home rather than sending them to school.28
Additionally, the quasi-permanence of TPS has led families to live in fear for long periods, knowing there is a possibility they could lose everything. For example, TPS was terminated for many individuals from Central America; as a result, thousands of children, “many of whom are U.S. citizens, now experience the burden of their parents’ precarious immigration status, in addition to the weight of the trauma that propelled their parents’ flight to the United States”29
Indirectly, when a child’s parent is deported or at risk of deportation, the child is also placed in limbo, potentially required to leave the United States even if they are a citizen, to prevent family separation.30 Additionally, upon return to their parents’ home country, children may be subjected to the same inhumane or troublesome situation that caused their parent to leave their home nation to begin with.31
In being threatened with leaving behind the only life they have ever known and facing the unknown, these children also face long-term mental health and physical health problems as a result of the burden of knowing their parents may be deported.32
International Law Obligations
According to Article 6 of the United States Constitution, the Constitution and all laws of the United States, “shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land…”33 Treaties thus constitute part of the “supreme law of the land,” and when the United States enters or ratifies a treaty, it becomes the law of the land.34
The U.S. ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 1992 (ACLU, 2013). Article 6 of the ICCPR states that every human being has the right to life.35 Sending nationals back to states that are actively in crisis puts those individuals’ lives at risk. As made clear in the Montserrat example, the United States has made arbitrary decisions regarding when human life is at risk and when it is not. In turn, forcing TPS beneficiaries to return to their home countries may violate their right to life under Article 6 if the risks associated with return remain.
Moreover, Article 9 of the ICCPR further reinforces the rights to liberty and security.36 On October 3, 2025, former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem determined that Venezuela no longer met the conditions for its designation for Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and that the termination of the 2023 Venezuela TPS designation was required, as it was contrary to the national interest (USCIS). Still, had the conditions in Venezuela changed sufficiently to warrant the safe return of Venezuelan nationals?
With the mass rates of arbitrary killings and detentions under Venezuela’s current regime, Venezuela again illustrates how ending TPS for some beneficiaries would mean depriving individuals of liberty and security.37 As made clear by the country conditions in Venezuela, human rights issues surrounding liberty and security remain largely unchanged compared to previous years, during which DHS deemed Venezuela eligible for TPS.
Moreover, the obligations of the ICCPR do not end at security and safety, but also extend to human dignity, respect, and the rights of individuals to have and maintain “privacy, family, home or correspondence” while also protecting individuals from “unlawful attacks on [their] honour and reputation.”38
By putting TPS beneficiaries in limbo, the United States disrespects and dishonors these individuals and the traumas they have endured to arrive in the United States. TPS’s legal limbo further traumatizes already marginalized and traumatized communities.39 Entire immigrant households and communities are put in disarray, not just the beneficiaries of TPS.40 More specifically, United States immigration policies have led to a silent form of humanitarian abuse: “The mental health impact of immigration policies extends far beyond individuals, affecting entire generations of migrant families and shaping the societal fabric of host communities” (Dadras & Hazratzai, 2025). In research conducted on the ramifications of long-term exposure to immigration enforcement policies, these policies were found to be linked to “cumulative trauma” and “intergenerational cycles of mental health disorders and legal precarity.”41 Entire families and communities are being torn apart or tormented for generations.
It is essential to note that the right to uphold the family unit is not limited to the ICCPR. Article 17(1) of the 1969 American Convention on Human Rights provides: “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the state.” This American Convention follows the logic of Article 16 of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, which provides: “1. No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honor and reputation. 2. The child has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.” Although the United States is the only country not to have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the aforementioned American Convention and the ICCPR have affirmed that the United States must safeguard and respect the family unit.42
Accordingly, when evaluating how the United States is implementing either Convention, it is clear that the U.S. is failing to do so as family units are regularly divided or are subject to division through the current TPS immigration framework.43
TPS - A Starting Place, Not the Finish Line
As it stands, TPS has no means of ripening into something more than a temporary solution (USCIS, 2025). Still, TPS is rooted in the United States’ commitment to nonrefoulement. As outlined in the 1967 United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, which the United States is a party to, “a refugee should not be returned to a country where he or she faces serious threats to his or her life or freedom on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”44 Congress developed the TPS program in the 1990s to address a gap in the INA for individuals who did not meet the requirements for asylum but still faced grave dangers of returning to their home countries. In turn, the list of TPS-eligible nations grew with time.45 Still, TPS’s structure remained constant—beneficiaries could stay and work in the United States—but their homes and lives were built on the flimsy eligibility determinations issued by the Department of Homeland Security.
By subjecting beneficiaries, their families, and their communities to the legal and emotional limbo of TPS, with no hope of advancing their status, the United States raises concerns for its lack of mandatory compliance to its obligations under ICCPR articles 6, 9, 10, and 17. Correspondingly, the United States is arguably violating its treaty obligations and going back on the word of its constitution (U.S. Const. art. VI, §2).
TPS has been overextended and strayed from its original purpose, but this does not mean it should be abandoned without an alternative. In turn, one of the leading alternative systems to TPS is the complementary system.46 More specifically, many countries conduct a two-pronged assessment when considering protection claims, as seen, for example, in several European Union member states.47 The first step in the examination is to use the definition of refugee from the 1951 Refugee Convention: a refugee is an individual who has “a well-founded fear of being persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”48 For individuals who do not meet this standard, they can alternatively qualify as a complementary protected person if they can prove that they “would face a real risk of serious harm for reasons other than a fear of persecution.”49 In the EU, recipients of this complementary status are also entitled to additional social benefits.50
Additionally, these individuals receive residency permits valid for at least one year, renewable for at least two years.51 Frelick also posits that Asylum and Complementary status should be adjudicated simultaneously, and that TPS should be reserved exclusively for mass influxes that overwhelm the asylum system.52
In establishing the changes mentioned above, this article recommends that Congress expand the pie for TPS beneficiaries.53 The status should have a pathway towards ripening. In light of the United States’ commitments to individuals’ rights to nationality and security, beneficiaries need a viable path out of limbo. As such, not only should the complementary system be considered, but TPS beneficiaries should have a path towards ripening their status.
1 , Temporary Protected Status (TPS): Fact Sheet, Nat'l Immigr. F. (Oct. 7, 2025), https://forumtogether.org/article/temporary-protected-status-fact-sheet/
2 , Temporary Protected Status, U.S. Citizenship & Immigr. Servs. (Mar. 17, 2026), https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/temporary-protected-status.
3 Id. (under what is TPS)
4 Id.
5 Id.
6 Id.
7 Id.
8 Id.
9 Frankie McLister, Eagan Woman from Honduras Forced to Leave U.S. After Trump Administration Ends her Temporary Protected Status, CBS NEWS (2025),
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/eagan-woman-honduras-temporary-protected-status/ .
10 Id.
11 Id.
12 U.S. Dep't of Homeland Sec., With Improved Conditions, DHS Ends TPS for Honduras (July 7, 2025), https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/07/07/improved-conditions-dhs-ends-tps-honduras.
13 McLister, supra note 9.
14 Id.
15 Id.
16 Id.
17 Nat'l Immigr. F., Temporary Protected Status (TPS): Fact Sheet (Oct. 7, 2025), https://forumtogether.org/article/temporary-protected-status-fact-sheet/
18 Id.
19 Eva Segerblom, Temporary Protected Status: An Immigration Statute That Redefines Traditional Notions of Status and Temporariness, 7 Nev. L.J. 664, 674 (2007).
20 Id.
21 Id.
22 Id.
23 Id.
24 Id.
25 Ryan Thoreson, Venezuela Events of 2024, HUM. RTS. WATCH ( Dec. 20, 2024), https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2025/country-chapters/venezuela
26 Myriam Valero, U. S. Immigration policy: Mental health impacts of increased detentions and deportations., APA (Sep 1, 2025). https://www.apa.org/monitor/2025/09/mental-health-immigration-enforcement.
27 Id.
28 Id.
29 Lisseth Rojas-Flores et al., Protecting U.S.-Citizen Children Whose Central American Parents Have Temporary Protected Status, Vol. 8(1):14-19 (2019).
30 Liela Schochet & Nicole Svajlenka, How Ending TPS Will Hurt U.S.-Citizen Children, Center for American Progress (Feb. 11, 2019), https://www.americanprogress.org/article/ending-tps-will-hurt-u-s-citizen-children/
31 Id.
32 U.S. Citizen Children Impacted by Immigration Enforcement, American Immigration Council (June 24, 2021), https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/us-citizen-children-impacted-immigration-enforcement/
33 U.S. Const. Art. VI.
34 Id.
35 International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, Mar. 23, 1973, 999 U.N.T.S. 171.
36 Id.
37 Supra note 25.
38 Supra note 35, articles 10 and 17(1).
39 Dadras & Hazratzai, The Silent Trauma: U.S. Immigration Policies and Mental Health, Vol. 44 The Lancet, (2025).
40 Id.
41 Id.
42 Sarah Mehta, There’s only one country that hasn’t ratified the Convention on Children’s Rights: US, ACLU, (Nov. 20, 2015),
https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/theres-only-one-country-hasnt-ratified-convention-childrens#:~:text=There ’s%20Only%20One%20Country%20That,US%20%7C%20American%20Civil%20Liberties%20Union.
43 Maanvi Singh, Trump Revives Family Separations Amid Drive to Deport Millions: ‘A tactic to punish’, Th Gaurdian, Oct. 2, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/oct/02/trump-immigration-family-separations-deportations
44 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, Jan. 31, 1967, 19 U.S.T. 6223; 606 U.N.T.S. 267.
45 Temporary Protected Status (TPS), U.S. Department of Justice, https://www.justice.gov/eoir/temporary-protected-status.
46 Bill Frelick, What’s Wrong with Temporary Protected Status and How to Fix It: Exploring a Complementary Protection Regime, Vol. 8, J. MIGRATION & HUM. SEC. , 42 (Feb 26, 2020).
47 Id.
48 Id.
49 Id.
50 Id. at 49-50.
51 Id. at 50.
52 Id.
53 Bill Frelick, What’s Wrong with Temporary Protected Status and How to Fix It: Exploring a Complementary Protection Regime, Vol. 8, J. MIGRATION & HUM. SEC. , (Feb 26, 2020).
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