Advocates of Salvadorans remaining in the United States must have felt relief recently when the Trump administration effectively stayed plans to terminate the endlessly renewed “Temporary” Protected Status that has shielded some 232,000 of them from deportation for two-plus decades.
By regulation, the Department of Homeland Security secretary’s failure to act on the latest Salvadoran TPS renewal provides TPS Salvadorans another six months in the U.S. and gives the Trump administration more time to contemplate when to terminate it. But terminate it they must, and here is why they would be justified in doing so.
It’s unclear if the White House or the president’s Cabinet again bought the repeated narrative that advocacy lobbyists and the media were selling: that it is immoral to deport Salvadorans into chronic unemployment to face extreme persecution from the (extremely popular) democratically reelected President Nayib Bukele’s government. But for the next six months, the White House and all Americans can expect to hear pro-illegal immigration activists selling an argument straight from the playbooks of American divorce lawyers: that ending TPS unjustly separates TPS-protected Salvadorans from the indulgent American “lifestyle to which they’ve grown accustomed.”
“Termination of TPS for El Salvador would send these well settled community members to a country … which does not have the means or capacity to support a diaspora of tens of thousands of people,” a group of 80 Democrat lawmakers wrote in a July letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, typical of the broader messaging campaign. “The economic foundations in El Salvador are precarious and deteriorating.”
But, in fact, the polar opposite is true. The Bukele government is begging its citizens to return to fill extreme labor shortages amid a massive, unprecedented real-estate, infrastructure, and construction boom that portends a far softer landing than constantly portrayed. This is especially true for Salvadorans in the U.S. who are likely more skilled than natives who never left. Beyond those protected by TPS, another nearly 1 million or more Salvadorans are believed to be living illegally in the United States.
Boom Times
Current and prospective U.S. returnees should find a government so eager to staff El Salvador’s economic boom with semi-skilled and very skilled workers that it has launched a “Reverse Migration” campaign and five-year incentive-based recruitment strategy that is heavily targeting those who have lived for years in the United States. It includes a new law that provides financial incentives to settle these Salvadorans in good jobs that will serve the country’s explosive economic growth across key nation-building economic sectors.
It all started in 2022 when Bukele launched nationwide security sweeps that transformed his country of 6.4 million from one of the world’s most dangerous to one of the region’s most investible in recent years by jailing between 75,000 and 100,000 members of El Salvador’s infamously ubiquitous crime gangs. This has contributed to a reported 98 percent reduction in homicides since 2015.
In turn, improved public security has fostered historic infrastructure, tourism, and real-estate housing, skyscraper, and resort construction booms, according to Global Finance and other foreign business publications. El Salvador’s gross domestic product is projected to rise by 4.5 percent in 2026, and the immediate future looks bright. Billions in foreign investment are still pouring in from major foreign lenders like the International Monetary Fund.
Maybe Salvadorans know something Bukele’s accusers don’t and would be happy to share their perceptions with returnees. Bukele’s notorious high-security gang prison and anti-gang security programs have indeed drawn sharp international criticism for arresting and imprisoning suspected gang members outside of normal legal systems, and leftist pro-illegal immigration groups claim he will oppress returnees like he does domestic opponents.
But polling consistently shows massive popular support for Bukele in ranges far exceeding 80 percent approval rates, and he was overwhelmingly reelected in 2024.
Nor does the prospect of authoritarian persecution seem to be weighing very heavily on the minds of Salvadorans in the U.S. Their money is speaking loudly.
Indeed, even Salvadoran families and workers in the U.S. are driving some of the residential building spree, buying up high-end beachfront condos and housing with the money they’ve saved working here.
A Soft Landing
U.S. illegal immigration advocates and U.S. media such as The New York Times have regularly sought to portray Bukele as a Trump supplicant whose public statements urging his people to come home are appeasing, meaningless lip service. Bukele can’t mean any of it, this narrative contends, because his country relies so heavily on remittance money from the U.S.
But Secretary Mullin can feel comfortable knowing that easily verified new realities reveal these narratives as obsolete and preposterous. So genuinely does the El Salvador government value returnees over their remittances that its Legislative Assembly last year passed Special Law 375 offering aggressive financial and travel incentives to TPS Salvadorans.
It provides duty-free importation for up to $100,000 worth of household cargo and even two personal vehicles that families can bring back from the U.S., as well as commercial work vehicles and specialized equipment to establish businesses.
The law even provides a tax exemption to incentivize Salvadorans to transfer their cash from American banks to Salvadoran ones. Returnees will land softly with plenty of help; the Ministry of Labor devised a registry called “Jobs for Returned Salvadorans” that matches returnees with jobs and incentivizes companies to participate.
A separate “Free Passports” program aims to fast-track elite diaspora professionals into the social fabric of the country as immediate full citizens, including scientists, engineers, doctors, and artists. A “Welcome Home” program and other related initiatives provide emergency shelter vouchers, comprehensive medical checkups, and legal case management to help returnees settle.
The Bukele government also distributes funds to support micro-enterprises, small stores, and repair shops for returnees. The Inter-American Development Bank approved $100 million in financing help for about 60,000 young Salvadorans, including U.S. returnees, for college financial aid and scholarships.
How It’s Going
The Trump administration deported 9,000-plus Salvadorans between the start of 2025 and March of this year, including 5,000 in just the first three months of 2026. Thousands more will no doubt be deported in the next two years of his administration. It’s unclear how many Salvadorans have voluntarily returned to take advantage of these incentives, although some clearly have.
Immigration advocacy publications universally showcase only deportee complaints of fear, loathing, and culture shock. But by suppressing El Salvador’s new lease on economic life, the fearmongering media narrative hides the full picture.
“My country is beautiful and totally safe,” Orsi Chicas, a 52-year-old Salvadoran who left California after 20 years working in hospitality and construction, told Public Radio’s The World. “The U.S. is good for working, but it’s hard, physical labor, and not everyone is made for that.”
Chicas and other voluntary returnees said all the money they earned in the United States goes a long way in El Salvador.
“My U.S. pension wasn’t enough to live on in California,” said Jose Vidal, who returned after three decades in L.A. “But here in San Salvador, I can get by comfortably.”
The bottom line is that Salvadorans who spent years gaining work experience and education in the United States most assuredly do not face terrible lives back home. They don’t need protection from El Salvador. El Salvador not only wants these relative elites. It needs them. The Trump administration needs to terminate TPS for El Salvador without further delay.
