Haitians, Hondurans, Salvadorans cope with protected status decision

Pastor Lander Saintelus doesn’t have to imagine what the end of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians will look like. He has watched the effects unfold inside his own community in New Bedford for months. And they have only intensified.

When Homeland Security announced more than a year ago that Haiti’s TPS would be terminated, Saintelus witnessed the fallout at the Bright Morning Star International Ministries, the Pentecostal church he leads.

By February, nearly his entire 100-member congregation was jobless. By March, he was helping families pay utility bills to keep the lights and heat on. Soon, he started answering calls from members too afraid to leave home to come to church because they feared immigration agents were waiting outside.

Then, on June 21, just after Sunday service, Saintelus says, he stepped outside his church on Page Street and saw three unfamiliar black vehicles parked at the curb. He said the people inside were wearing vests with “ICE” across the chest. Panic rippled through the congregation.

“I had to keep (everyone) inside the church until they were gone,” he said. Twenty minutes later, the vehicles left, and the pastor and his wife began to drive the congregants home. “We were in shock,” he said. “That’s the situation that we are living in right now in America.”

That encounter made the threat real, Saintelus said. Four days later, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to proceed with its plan to end TPS for Haitians and Syrians, potentially exposing hundreds of thousands of people from those countries to deportation.

Estimates of the number of Haitian TPS holders in Massachusetts range from 22,000 in a recent UMass Boston report to 45,000, according to the offices of the governor and attorney general.

The decision opens the door to ending protections for TPS holders from about a dozen other countries.

In New Bedford, that includes Hondurans, whose TPS status ended last year. The court decision leaves them little hope of reviving their lost status. It also includes Salvadorans, whose TPS status expires in September.

What Temporary Protected Status means

TPS was one of several major immigration programs established by the Immigration Act of 1990, a law sponsored by then-Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. The move came after the Reagan administration, in the 1980s, refused to extend executive protections to people fleeing El Salvador’s bloody civil war.

“(It’s) a form of immigration status that provides work authorization and protection from deportation for a specified period of time,” said Alexander Holtzman, director of the Deportation Defense Clinic at Hofstra University Law School. “Congress has used temporary protected status to protect individuals from countries that are not safe to return to.”

Issued at the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security, the status covers people from nations experiencing instability stemming from natural disasters — like the 2010 Haiti earthquake — to conflict and more. The status can be granted to people from the designated nationalities for periods of six to 18 months.

But, Holtzman said, the word “temporary” is more nuanced than it first appears, saying that sometimes a calamity begets more calamity, meaning that extensions can become regular and the status starts to feel permanent.

“A reason that might justify granting TPS can change over time if additional conditions prolong the suffering of a populace and make it dangerous to return,” he said. Even so, because the status is temporary, it does not lead to legal permanent residency or citizenship on its own.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision gives the administration broad power to end TPS protections.

“The majority (of justices) at least decided that that’s not something that courts can weigh in on,” Holtzman said. “It’s purely within the discretion of the Department of Homeland Security.”

Hondurans: ‘How can I go back and start again?’

Redin Almendarez and his wife moved to New York City shortly after Hurricane Mitch made landfall in Honduras in October 1998, devastating their native land. Less than three months later, the U.S. Department of Justice declared Hondurans eligible for TPS protections. By March 2025, more than 51,000 Hondurans lived in the U.S. with the protections.

Some of those are among 972 Honduran residents in New Bedford, including the Almendarezes, who moved to the city in 2001.

“I’ve had it all this time,” Almendarez told The Light in Spanish. “I’d been an authorized immigrant.”

In the quarter-century since, Almendarez said he raised his annual income to around $250,000. He’s raised three daughters, two of whom are still at home, aged 16 and 10, both U.S. citizens. Eleven years ago, he bought a two-story home near Buttonwood Park. Three years ago, he provided backing for his eldest daughter — a legal permanent resident — to establish a Honduran restaurant on Acushnet Avenue.

But he may soon leave that all behind. The administration terminated TPS for Hondurans on Sept. 8, 2025. This July 14, a federal appeals court, citing the new Supreme Court decision, struck down a lower court order that had stayed the termination. Almendarez effectively has been de-documented.

“I’m not really prepared to leave the country,” he said. “We can’t really have a life in our country like we have in the U.S.

“I’ve been here for 30 years and have not returned to Honduras in that time,” the 51-year old continued. “How can I go back and start again?”

Salvadorans: ‘They don’t know where they’re going to end up’

Salvadorans were the first to receive TPS, in 1991, as they fled El Salvador’s civil war. According to a recent report, 7,354 Salvadoran TPS holders live in Massachusetts.

Doris Landaverde, an Everett resident and coordinator for the Massachusetts TPS Committee, is one of them. She grew up in El Salvador during the civil war and emigrated to the U.S. in the 1990s. In 2001, the DOJ authorized a second round of protections for Salvadorans on the heels of two devastating earthquakes. Barring an extension, their protections are set to expire on Sept. 9.

The Supreme Court “left us with minimal space to use the courts to protect families,” Landaverde said in Spanish. “That’s why it is important for the community to understand that the impact of this case on Haiti and Syria doesn’t affect them alone.”

The most recent Census estimate of New Bedford’s Salvadoran population puts them at 1,900 people, though the number who have TPS is unknown. Lilly Rodriguez, a New Bedford community advocate and Salvadoran immigrant, said members of the community are “scared” as they await the Trump administration’s decision on whether to extend their TPS.

“They’re people that have had TPS for the last 20 years, and they don’t know where they’re going to end up,” she said.

Rodriguez said confusion around TPS policies has led to people losing their jobs with local companies, even though they have TPS protections. She recalled helping three Salvadoran men in March after a local manufacturer fired them under the erroneous belief that they no longer had permission to work in the U.S.

“I’ve seen people (return) back to El Salvador because they don’t want to live with the uncertainty,” she said. “There are definitely a lot of good people out there who need to continue being here.”

If Salvadorans with TPS leave New Bedford, she says, it’ll hurt the local economy.

“People don’t want to work in fish houses. People don’t want to work in the factories,” she said. “I can tell you who works there.”

Haitians: ‘There is no peace there’

On July 12, about 150 people arrived at the opening of Saintelus’ new church on Purchase Street in New Bedford, dressed in sparkling gowns and matching suits. The invitation had circulated only by text message and word of mouth among trusted people. It was too risky to announce it publicly, Saintelus said.

He plans to turn part of the unfinished basement into a small apartment with a bed and kitchenette in case someone needs a place to stay.

“It is 2026,” he said. “But it feels like 1933.”

Saintelus said some families in the congregation are talking about leaving for Chile or Brazil out of fear that deportation could separate them from their children — about 30 are U.S. born and therefore American citizens.

On one point everyone agrees: Returning to Haiti is not an option.

“We would all love one day to go back and live there forever,” Saintelus said. “But at the moment, there is no peace there.”

Since the devastating 2010 earthquake, Haiti has been engulfed by violence and a humanitarian crisis, with Haitians facing gang attacks, gender-based violence, exploitation and trafficking.

The U.S. Department of State has placed Haiti under a Level 4 travel advisory — its highest alert level, reserved for life-threatening risks — urging Americans, “Do Not Travel.”

Though going back is dangerous, staying in the United States is becoming unsustainable. About 95% of the members of Saintelus’ church — most of them TPS holders — have lost their jobs, he estimated. Haitian work permits remain valid through July 24.

Although TPS is currently in place (while a lower court works through the Supreme Court’s ruling), many Haitians are seeing their expired work authorizations not being renewed, said Carline Desire, executive director of the Association of Haitian Women in Boston.

“They want to end it, so renewing the expired ones isn’t necessarily their priority,” Desire said.

Without work, families’ bills piled up. Saintelus said one family was evicted, while another cooks at a neighbor’s house after losing gas service.

“They are trying very hard to survive,” Saintelus said.

He believes the economic effect will soon spread as more TPS holders lose the ability to work in healthcare, construction and other industries.

According to a 2023 analysis by the American Immigration Council, more than 164,000 Haitian TPS holders paid almost $984 million in taxes.

“They bring life to the community,” Saintelus said. “Without them, it’s going to be rough and tough for the American community, the American people.”

What’s next

Desire described the past year as a legal roller coaster.

“We had a lot of momentum, a lot of joy, a lot of happiness right before the Supreme Court’s June 25 decision,” she said. Desire helped advocate for bipartisan legislation to extend Temporary Protected Status for Haitians through April 2029. It passed the House in April after advancing through a discharge petition led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley.

The U.S. Senate referred a similar bill, S. 4814, to the Judiciary Committee on June 17.

“We already have 22 senators,” Desire said. “We need 60 senators for the bill to pass, and we know the president will veto it.” If so, it’ll take 67 senators to override his veto.

Whatever comes next, those affected are preparing themselves.

“I’m not afraid,” said Landaverde, the Salvadoran TPS holder and advocate. “I grew up in a country where there were bombs exploding down the street from my house.

“I’ve lived with a lot of fear in my life and it’s time to heal from that,” she continued. “Now is the time for action.” ___

This story was originally published by The New Bedford Light and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.