Thirty-one-year-old Daysi González is among around 170,000 people originally from El Salvador who are legally living in the U.S. through Temporary Protected Status, or TPS.

On Tuesday, when she spoke with Spectrum News, she was uncertain whether she would still be a legal resident after Wednesday.  

“I’ve been telling people that it feels like the rug is being pulled out from under me constantly,” she said. “ … It’s never felt this final. Like, it’s never gotten this close to the expiration date without any news.” 

Earlier this year, the Trump administration announced it is ending TPS for Salvadorans effective Wednesday. But Gonzalez said that she has heard nothing since that announcement and has been planning for the worst-case scenario. 

“The plan is to sell my house, everything that I can’t take with me and go back to El Salvador, a place I haven’t been to since I was 5,” Gonzalez explained. 

Late Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security offered Gonzalez and others like her some answers on the future of her legal status. Gonzalez was worried that on Thursday she would lose her ability to continue working in the U.S. or risk being deported. 

“An announcement on El Salvador’s TPS will be made at the appropriate time,” a DHS spokesperson told Spectrum News in a statement. “Until such announcement is made, Salvadoran individuals present in the U.S. under TPS retain protection.”

The information from DHS is not what Gonzalez had hoped for, which was that TPS would be extended again. Thd designation for Salvadorans has been extended many times since it was first put into place in December 2000. The news does, however, allow Salvadoran TPS holders to continue working for now. Not knowing how long those protections will last keeps Gonzalez and others like her in limbo.  

USC Gould School of Law professor Jean Reisz says that TPS holders generally don’t have a legal pathway toward citizenship. 

“TPS doesn’t provide a pathway to permanent resident status, and one has to be a permanent resident before they can become a citizen,” she said. “The only way to become a permanent resident is through a close family member, through employment, with special skills and through asylum or as a refugee.”

Reisz added that a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision also gives the Trump administration a lot of power in deciding when it wants to end TPS protections. 

“The problem is the Supreme Court decision, Mullin vs. Doe, really took a lot of rights away to challenge a decision not to extend TPS or the decision to terminate it,” Reisz said. “It made a lot of those challenges go away because the Supreme Court says we can’t really review that decision.”

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has previously lobbied the Trump administration to extend TPS for other groups but has been unsuccessful. Immigration advocates, however, say that deporting Salvadoran TPS holders will have a unique impact on the U.S. economy.  

According to the American Immigration Council, Maryland, Virginia, California, Texas and New York have the largest numbers of Salvadoran TPS holders. There are also significant numbers living in North Carolina, Massachusetts and Georgia. Many of them work in construction, food service and landscaping. 

“It’s going to create a lot of hiccups in the economy, and a lot of businesses can’t survive because they can’t hire such workers,” said Ernesto Castaneda, director at the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies. “If they don’t have enough workers and they cannot fulfill the contracts, they’re going to have to close. So a lot of American citizens stand to lose money and probably lose their jobs because there won’t be enough workers for those businesses that hire them.”

Castaneda believes that even President Donald Trump could be impacted by a decision to end Salvadoran TPS. He said he believes the deportation of these TPS recipients could lead to delays with some of Trump’s own construction projects in the D.C. area. 

“Right now, there’s a heliport that is being finished, being built in front of the White House, as well as the ballroom,” Castaneda said. “Some of those workers are likely Salvadorans. Some of them will have been working legally here through TPS.”

While living in their communities and working, TPS holders have also been paying taxes and spending money at local businesses. Some have started their own businesses which employ U.S. citizens. Others have started families and risk separation from children who are U.S. citizens.