‘Used and Abused for Decades’: Texas Lawmaker Seeks Overhaul of Temporary Protected Status 

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A Texas congressman is aiming to reform the Temporary Protected Status program for migrants and to end the abuses of the program.  

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, on Thursday will introduce a bill that, if passed and signed into law, would grant Congress, not the president, authority to designate a foreign country under U.S. Temporary Protected Status.  

“Temporary Protect Status has been used and abused for decades by both Democratic and Republican presidential administrations,” Roy told The Daily Signal.  

TPS was first enacted in 1990 to protect foreign nationals from danger in their home county, but, as Roy pointed out, the program has long been abused and used as a tool to grant “soft amnesty” to millions of foreigners. 

The Department of Homeland Security has the authority to designate nationals from a specific country eligible for TPS due to safety concerns that prevent them from returning to their home country, or other circumstances that prevent a nation from being able to handle the return of its citizens.  

The secretary of the Department of Homeland Security may designate a nation for TPS if that country is experiencing an “ongoing armed conflict,” such as a civil war; is suffering from an “environmental disaster … or an epidemic”; or for other “extraordinary and temporary conditions,” according to the DHS. 

Under the leadership of President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the previous administration “quadruped the TPS population from 410,400 to 1.5 million in four years, shielding hundreds of thousands of economic illegal aliens from removal while providing them with work permits, serving as another ‘pull factor’ for illegal immigration,” Roy said, adding:

No more. The United States cannot, and should not, reward immigration lawbreakers with amnesty through the TPS program. 

“It’s time Congress end this abuse by taking away the TPS designation authority from the executive by having members of Congress introduce legislation—and vote on—issuing and terminating TPS designations,” Roy said.  

The TPS Reform Act of 2025 would grant sole authority to Congress to vote on and approve a nation’s citizens’ eligibility for the program.  

While those who receive TPS are allowed to stay in the U.S. for between six and 18 months, that status can be extended indefinitely and “therein lies one of the major flaws in the way the law was drafted,” according to Dan Cadman of the Center for Immigration Studies.   

Roy’s bill sets an 18-month maximum length for a TPS duration and requires an additional congressional act to renew TPS designation. 

Furthermore, the bill would require TPS designations to include not only the number of foreign nationals who would be affected, but also the immigration status of those foreign nationals. Those who are already in the country illegally would not be eligible for TPS under the bill.  

DHS currently lists 17 countries with TPS designation: Afghanistan, Burma (Myanmar), Cameroon, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Lebanon, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Yemen.  

Under the Biden administration, additional nations were given TPS designation, and the terms of the program were expanded to accommodate more migrants.  

Biden granted thousands of illegal immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela TPS status, flying them directly into the interior of the U.S. 

After a legal battle, the Supreme Court ruled in May that the Trump administration could revoke temporary protected status for 500,000 illegal aliens living in the U.S. who entered under Biden’s Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela parole program. 

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