DHS Warns TPS Holders to Take Exit Offer

The Trump administration warned temporary protected status holders Friday that their window to accept a $2,600 stipend and a free flight home is closing fast.

The Department of Homeland Security's general counsel, James Percival, said lower courts are still blocking terminations already cleared by the Supreme Court.

As of Friday, work permits for TPS recipients from Haiti, Syria, and five other countries remain valid under interim guidance from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, even as DHS presses recipients to leave voluntarily before that protection lapses.

Percival said the extension had been widely misread as a reprieve.

"For those with an expiring TPS designation, these final days provide one last opportunity to accept $2,600 and a free flight home," he wrote on X in comments carried by Newsweek.

The stipend, tied to voluntary departure through Customs and Border Protection's CBP Home app, was raised from $1,000 to its current level in a January DHS announcement marking the first anniversary of the second Trump administration.

The June 25 ruling in Mullin v. Doe, consolidated with Trump v. Miot, split 6-3 in a decision holding that Congress had barred federal courts from reviewing nonconstitutional challenges to a homeland security secretary's decision to designate, extend, or terminate TPS.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, reversed lower court orders that had frozen terminations for roughly 350,000 Haitian and 6,000 Syrian nationals, and remanded for further proceedings.

Implementation has moved unevenly.

USCIS and E-Verify have issued rolling extensions covering TPS holders from Haiti, Syria, Burma (Myanmar), Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen, most recently pushing the operative Form I-9 date for Haiti to July 24, according to agency notices posted this month.

Percival, quoted by Newsweek, singled out the Somalia case, saying the judge "has refused to even consider the issue until August 20" and calling the pace "more of the same judicial sabotage we have been facing on TPS for a year and a half."

Rebecca Shi, chief executive of the American Business Immigration Coalition Action, told Newsweek that mixed signals had left employers guessing. Salvadoran TPS holders alone, she said, contribute $5.4 billion to the U.S. economy and $1.5 billion in annual federal, state, and local taxes.

Once injunctions lift and terminations take effect, affected holders lose work authorization and legal status and become subject to removal proceedings.

Jim Thomas ✉

Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.

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