Podcast: Trump Stalls on TPS Decision for El Salvador | The Lighthouse

This is the transcript of episode 88 of the weekly El Faro English podcast, Central America in Minutes.

ARIAS: A three-line paragraph sent to media outlets is not the official announcement we are waiting for. It is not the process created under an immigration law. This short and vague statement leaves TPS holders from El Salvador in a more complicated legal limbo.

GRESSIER, HOST: That’s Yanira Arias, National Campaign Manager for the immigrant-led organization Alianza Américas.

US President Donald Trump has slashed Temporary Protected Status for countries around the world. But El Salvador is different. Their designation was set to expire Wednesday, September 9, but the administration hasn’t made up its mind yet.

I’m your host, Roman Gressier. On today’s episode: Trump stalls on TPS for El Salvador, US contractors will find sports to collect millions in fees, and former Nicaraguan political prisoners live in precarious conditions in Guatemala.

From the studios of El Faro English, this is Central America in Minutes.

Stalled TPS decision for El Salvador

Temporary legal protections from deportation for more than 170,000 Salvadorans were set to expire this week, Leyrian Colón Santiago reports. But they’ll remain in effect until further notice, said the Department of Homeland Security.

On September 9, the day it was set to expire, DHS announced that a decision on TPS for Salvadorans would be made “at the appropriate time.” They didn’t say when. But for now, Salvadorans in the program remain protected from deportation.

That didn’t happen in the case of Nicaragua or Honduras, which ended after a legal fight earlier this year. The Trump administration has ended TPS for 13 countries.

Back in 1992, when El Salvador’s civil war came to an end, it was the first country to receive TPS. They re-entered the program in 2001, following two catastrophic earthquakes.

In January 2025, right before leaving office, Joe Biden extended TPS for El Salvadorbut not for Honduras or Nicaragua.

Under federal law, DHS has to announce TPS renewal decisions at least 60 days before expiration. For El Salvador, that meant in early July. They missed that deadline without explanation.

“Temporary protected status means temporary. Let’s face it, El Salvador is a much safer country than it’s ever been now, with a new president up there,” Trump border czar Tom Homan said. Nayib Bukele has been in office since 2019.

In July, 80 Democrats in Congress urged DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to extend TPS, arguing that “serious new humanitarian, economic, and human rights crises are compounding El Salvador’s inability to handle the return of its nationals.”

Bukele has been a close partner in Trump’s deportation agenda, receiving Venezuelans and Salvadorans in his prisons. Unlike Trump’s first term, when Bukele requested a TPS extension, this time around he hasn’t publicly pushed.

With elections in El Salvador around the corner, the diaspora is an important base of support that will now have its own legislative representatives. In 2024, diaspora voters cast their ballots almost entirely for Bukele.

US seeks purposes from returnees

In early September, US Customs and Border Protection awarded contracts to four companies to collect purposes for violations of immigration law from deported nationals of Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico.

Yuliana Ramazzini reports that the contracts total $36 million dollars, with each contract worth $9 million dollars.

At the end of July, DHS reported that over 66,000 people were removed from the United States with outstanding fines totaling $423 million. That’s about 6,370 dollars per person.

But the full scope of US immigration purposes is much larger. DHS told CNN that, from January 2025 through July 2026, the Trump administration fined over 100,000 undocumented immigrants for a towering sum of over $84 billion dollars.

As for the recent contracts for Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, the four companies are Global Recovery Group, Caduceus, Response AI Solutions, and the Baptiste Group. According to Project Salt Box, a free-access database for investigative reporting on the US immigration system, each previously signed federal contracts related to immigration.

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The U.S. expectations the contractors to notify people who have already been deported, and who now live outside US jurisdiction, that they face outstanding purposes. And find a way for them to pay up internationally.

In Guatemala, attorney Ana Gabriela Urízar told newspaper Prensa Libre that purposes are increasing daily. And the US government says it will charge people $998 dollars a day if they don’t self-deport after receiving a removal order.

two women voluntarily returned to Guatemala in early 2026. Days later, they began receiving letters from the State Department notifying them of fines of $1.8 and $2.3 million, respectively.

Urízar said that some fines resulted from missed immigration hearings, including for minors.

There are no exact records of how many people have been notified. CBP promised to waive ends for those who self-deport. But that wasn’t the case for the two Guatemalan women.

Stateless Nicaraguans in Guatemala

September 5 marked two years since 135 former Nicaraguan political prisoners were suddenly flown to Guatemala, Gabriel Labrador reports. They had been given fresh passports, but soon after, the Ortega-Murillo regime stripped them of their citizenship, leaving them stateless — a crime under international law.

The Biden administration flew them from the airport in Managua to Guatemala City, where the US and Guatemalan governments claimed political victory and promised resettlement aid.

On the plan, US officials said the group would wait in Guatemala for resettlement in the United States or another country. But for some, the US government broke that promise.

Guillermo Montalván, an attorney representing the group at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, told El Faro English that the United States denied refuge to 39 of the 135 former political prisoners.

The US government accepted the regime’s unproven charges that they had committed crimes such as terrorism. The group was facing charges similar to those who were resettled.

Almost all had been arrested after participating in the mass protests of 2018. Some transported protesters; others distributed flyers or defaced monuments. UN investigators found that state security forces killed at least 355 people. By March 2025, there were over 5,000 arbitrary detentions.

El Faro English asked USCIS about the criteria to deny refugee. They deferred to the State Department, which didn’t respond.

Of the group that arrived in Guatemala City, only 24 remain in the country. The rest resettled in Spain, Canada, or the United States. Those who remained in Guatemala are still stateless. They live on the outskirts of Guatemala City in precarious shared housing, lacking stable jobs, healthcare, and access to schooling. There are nine children, including a newborn.

In January 2025, after Trump took office, aid to the families was suddenly suspended. Resources were drying up.

The international community has celebrated the release of hundreds of Nicaraguan political prisoners since early 2023. El Faro photojournalist Carlos Barrera profiled the group that landed in Guatemala in September 2024.

For them, he wrote in a recent photo essaytheir expulsion from prison in Nicaragua was only the beginning. A new sentence had just begun: their miserable exile in Guatemala.

This episode was written by Leyrian Colon Santiago, Yuliana Ramazzini, Gabriel Labradorand Carlos Barrera. Editing by Roman Gressier and sound design by Omnionn.

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