WS Chronicle

JESS SCHNUR 

THE CHRONICLE 

This past Saturday, July 5, Honduras’ Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program expired, leaving 52,585 people in a state of uncertainty surrounding their immigration status.  

Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is assigned to foreign countries by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) during periods of instability that interfere with the safe return of nationals to their home country. This includes instances of armed conflict, environmental disaster, health epidemics, and other “extraordinary and temporary conditions,” as listed on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ website.  

According to the National Immigration Forum’s June 2025 TPS Fact Sheet, 27,065 TPS holders reside in the State of North Carolina, ranking 11th among the 50 states and Hawaii in terms of TPS recipient population.  

According to data from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, as of 2017, TPS holders from El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti have annually contributed $4.5 billion in pre-taxed wages or salary income. Termination of TPS for these three countries, therefore, would reduce Social Security and Medicare contributions by $6.9 billion over a decade. Without contributions made from TPS holders from these countries, a $45.2 billion reduction in GDP would span over a decade.  

Many TPS programs remain in a precarious position following DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s announcements over the past four months of recent TPS terminations – Venezuela (Feb. 5), Nepal (June 6), Afghanistan and Cameroon (April 11) – alongside a reduction in Haiti’s TPS period of extension from 18 months to 12 months back in February, which is now set to expire Aug. 3, 2025. Today, the Department of Homeland Security put out a statement officially announcing the termination of Honduras’ TPS status.  

“Temporary Protected Status was designed to be just that – temporary,” said Secretary Kristi Noem in today’s statement on the DHS website. “It is clear that the Government of Honduras has taken all of the necessary steps to overcome the impacts of Hurricane Mitch, almost 27 years ago. Honduran citizens can safely return home, and DHS is here to help facilitate their voluntary return. Honduras has been a wonderful partner of the Trump Administration, helping us deliver on key promises to the American people. We look forward to continuing our work with them.” 

Back in May, the Trump Administration established Project Homecoming as a means of self-deportation for undocumented immigrants, offering free travel and a $1,000 “exit bonus” for immigrants to return to their country of lawful status. “Honduran nationals departing the United States are encouraged to use the U.S. Customs and Border Protection CBP Home app to report their departure from the United States and take advantage of a safe, secure way to leave the United States with a complimentary plane ticket, a $1,000 exit bonus to help them resettle in Honduras, and preserve future opportunities for legal immigration,” read today’s DHS statement. 

However, despite Noem’s assessment of improved country conditions and opportunities offered under Honduras’ President Xiomara Castro for returning TPS recipients, a deeper underlying issue remains: many of these TPS holders have called the U.S. home for the past 26 years. 

TPS holders in our community, like Brajan Funes, have spent nearly a quarter of a century paying taxes, taking out mortgages, and establishing their lives in communities across the nation. Funes, who moved to Winston-Salem with his parents following the devastation of Hurricane Mitch in 1999, says the DHS’s prolonged silence leading up to the termination of Honduran TPS was especially harmful. 

“This past time, it’s been really scary. What will normally happen is, every 18 months [TPS] renews: three months before it expires is typically always the time that they announce a renewal,” Funes told The Chronicle in an interview three weeks before his program’s expiration. “Well, this time, that didn’t happen. So, it was so incredibly painful because it’s almost like not even an acknowledgement. It’s just they’re gonna let it expire. It’s not a formal announcement like, ‘Hey we’re gonna cancel you.’ I mean we’re three weeks out now, and there’s still been no formal announcement over the program that ends July 5. And so, this time feels especially hurtful just because it feels like neglect; It just feels like we’re really nobody.” 

According to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the Secretary of DHS must provide a notice of a TPS program’s termination 60 days prior to the TPS expiration date. If a notice is not published to the Federal Register in those 60 days, a program will be automatically renewed for six additional months, according to the American Immigration Council. Despite this stipulation, there is an important caveat to this rule: according to Ahluwalia Law Office’s website, an immigration attorney based in Dallas, Texas, DHS has the authority to enact a 60-day termination notice at any time, and therefore has the ability to override the automatic extension. 

The Federal Register’s website currently houses an unpublished copy of the termination from the DHS, scheduled to be officially posted tomorrow, July 8. The termination will go into effect 60 days after its official publication to the Federal Register, and thus those with TPS will become subject to deportation from that point forward.  

Funes is part of a mixed-status family, with two younger siblings who are U.S. citizens. Not only will his family split up in the event of his and his parents’ deportation, but he will be returning to a country he hasn’t seen since he was four years old.  

Despite his English being more proficient than his Spanish, and his graduation from Forsyth Tech set for this fall, Funes faces the difficult decision of uprooting his life in Winston-Salem to start anew in Honduras. But there is also an underlying fear of safety, said Funes.  

According to research conducted by the Latin America Working Group, a nonprofit organization that advocates for policy and support of Latin America and the Caribbean, in 2019 it was found that Honduran TPS recipients who had returned to the country had been highly at risk for extortion and being targeted for gang recruitment under the belief that since TPS migrants were living in the U.S., they have substantial financial resources.  

“I am your neighbor. I grew up in the same town, same schools, playing the same sports; going through a lot of the same rite of passage [as] everyone else,” said Funes. “I work. I pay taxes. I proudly serve my community – just because I enjoy to do it, I don’t anticipate any reward out of it. I grew up here in Winston. Winston is my town, my home. Everything about Winston, every corner of Winston, I’ve been a part of; I’ve served in every corner, I grew up in every corner of Winston because my parents moved around a lot when I was younger … I can’t imagine growing old anywhere else. 

This is home.”