USCIS Auto-Extends Work Permits for Many TPS Beneficiaries

At the end of June, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) notified Temporary Protected Status (TPS) beneficiaries from El Salvador, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Sudan that the validity period for their work permits (employment authorization documents, or EADs) would be automatically extended through March 9, 2025.¹ USCIS also extended through August 3, 2025, the validity period of EADs issued to Haitian TPS beneficiaries. These automatic extensions follow the extension by U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of the re-registration periods of the TPS designations for these same countries from 60 days to the full 18-month designation period at the end of 2023.²

Beneficiaries are normally required to re-register for TPS status for the most recent designation extension for each designated country. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), however, only permits the Secretary of Homeland Security to designate a country for TPS for a period no longer than 18 months.³

USCIS officials revealed at a recent stakeholder engagement that DHS extended the validity of their documents in part because of a low rate of re-registrations from these countries. Almost 50 percent of the eligible El Salvador, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Sudan TPS beneficiaries have failed to re-register for TPS for their current respective designation periods.⁴

There are a few possible reasons for beneficiaries’ failure to re-register for TPS. TPS beneficiaries may be misinformed or confused about the requirement to re-register, especially given recent court orders under the Ramos v. Mayorkas and Bhattarai v. Mayorkas  litigation (companion cases challenging the Trump administration’s 2017 and 2018 attempts to terminate these countries’ TPS designations) that have allowed TPS to be automatically extended for these countries.⁵ Additionally, eligible applicants may have obtained or have pending applications to obtain other immigration benefits, such as asylum, or simply see no reason to pay the fees associated with re-registration given the current administration’s nearly non-existent interior enforcement policies. 

In December 2023, DHS explained that it extended the re-registration periods for “a number of reasons,” including “confusion within the beneficiary population and operational considerations for USCIS.” DHS further explained that “Limiting the reregistration period to 60 days for these particular beneficiaries may place a burden on applicants who are unable to timely file but would otherwise be eligible to re-register for TPS, particularly in light of the ongoing litigation and the resulting overlapping periods of TPS validity announces in several Federal Register notices, which may be confusing to some current beneficiaries.”

USCIS’s historic backlogs and growing EAD portfolio is also likely to blame for the agency’s decision to automatically extend the validity period of TPS beneficiaries’ EAD documents. Last year, the USCIS Ombudsman (a Biden administration appointee) confirmed that the agency has struggled immensely with its EAD portfolio, and pointed to the administration’s historic expansion of TPS as a major factor. In its 2023 report to Congress, the Ombudsman wrote, “Processing work authorization for these populations in itself is a never-ending task for the agency.” The USCIS Ombudsman noted that this growing population means “that the agency carries a larger and more complex workload with each new designation or extension.” 

The Biden-Harris administration has expanded the TPS population to historic levels by extending or re-designating TPS for every country that had current designations at the time President Biden took office, as well as by designating new countries for TPS. Many of these countries, however, were designated decades ago, and some were premised on storms that have long passed, such as 1998’s Hurricane Mitch, which has protected nationals from Honduras and Nicaragua from removal (and provided work authorization) ever since, despite no longer posing disruptions in these countries. As of March 2024, 863,880 people are estimated to be protected from removal under TPS.