--- title: "Twenty-Five Years of Roots, and a Notice That They May Be Pulled Up" description: "A Malden construction owner with Temporary Protected Status waits to learn whether El Salvador’s designation will end" author: "Walter Pine" published: 2026-09-27T10:00:01Z modified: 2026-09-27T21:09:55Z url: https://rews.cc/a/twenty-five-years-of-roots-and-a-notice-that-they-may-be-pul-d29db1 language: en tags: ["immigration", "trump", "economy", "politics", "us"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # Twenty-Five Years of Roots, and a Notice That They May Be Pulled Up *A Malden construction owner with Temporary Protected Status waits to learn whether El Salvador’s designation will end* By Walter Pine · September 27, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/twenty-five-years-of-roots-and-a-notice-that-they-may-be-pul-d29db1 ## In brief - A Malden construction owner faces losing Temporary Protected Status his family has held for 25 years - The Trump administration has ended TPS for 13 of 17 designated countries in under two years - FWD.us projects up to 3.5 million immigrants with temporary protection will lose status by 2028 - Many Salvadoran TPS holders in Massachusetts have already lost jobs or cannot renew licenses - Remittances of more than $10 billion a year, over a quarter of El Salvador’s GDP, complicate Bukele’s position “You’re going to plant a tree and you think in 25 years you’re going to just grab it with your hands and pull it \[up\] and that’s it?” The man asking is Urias, a Salvadoran construction company owner in Malden, Massachusetts, and the tree is his life. “Twenty-five years \[of Salvadoran TPS\] — you don’t call that temporary,” he told the Boston Globe. “Those roots, they are really deep.” Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, shields people from deportation to countries experiencing civil unrest or recovering from natural disasters. Salvadorans have held the designation for a quarter century. Urias came to the United States at 16; five years later, working in a restaurant, he had saved enough for a down payment on a house in Lawrence. He now owns a home in Malden, runs a construction company he has operated for 18 years, and has one son in college and another in high school, both US citizens. His wife, a manager at a local hotel, is also a Salvadoran TPS holder. In less than two years, according to the Globe, the Trump administration has ended TPS for 13 of the 17 countries holding the designation. In July, 45,000 Haitian TPS holders in Massachusetts became undocumented, many of them caregivers for older or disabled residents, which set off mass firings and the threat of deportation. Salvadorans’ protection is still in place, but no decision has been announced; the Department of Homeland Security declined the Globe’s questions and pointed to a USCIS alert saying that “an announcement on El Salvador’s TPS will be made at the appropriate time.” Last year, then-DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that “previous administrations abused, exploited, and mangled TPS into a de facto amnesty program.” FWD.us, an immigration policy organization, projects that as many as 3.5 million immigrants with temporary protection will lose their legal status by 2028, more than a third of them TPS holders. “This is the biggest de-documentation in the entire history of this country,” said Urias, a member of the National TPS Alliance. The effects have begun before any formal decision. According to the Massachusetts TPS Committee, many Salvadorans have already lost their jobs: airport workers, nurses, teachers, construction workers. People who drive for work cannot renew their licenses while their status is unclear. Bus drivers and others needing commercial licenses face a separate obstacle, since the administration barred many noncitizens from holding CDLs. The state has something at stake, too. More than a quarter of Massachusetts business owners are foreign-born, generating over $3 billion in annual business income, according to the American Immigration Council; an estimated 5,000 business owners in the state hold TPS, and the Small Business Administration now requires loan applicants to be US citizens. Urias has already begun unwinding. He slowed his company once before, when Trump tried to revoke Salvadoran TPS in his first term, an attempt the courts blocked, and began organizing TPS holders around the same time; over nine years with state and national groups he has travelled the country and met with members of Congress. Fewer ongoing projects, he reasons, means that if he must leave, “less people are going to be hurt.” The permanent route has not come through: he applied for a green card 11 years ago through a brother born in the US and is still waiting. Applying through a sibling currently takes about 15 years, said Jackie Kelley, director of immigration legal services at the Rian Immigrant Center in Boston. “For most people, there just isn’t a pathway to apply for permanent status,” she said. If the family is forced to go, the arithmetic of a household divides badly. Their 14-year-old does not speak Spanish; their elder son is 20. Take the boy, or leave him with his brother? Urias insists the older son finish college before anything else, though he allows that the young man could one day take over the business. Hovering over the uncertainty is geopolitics. El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has met Trump twice in Washington, and his country was among the first to accept deportees from the United States. During Trump’s first term Bukele asked that Salvadoran TPS not be revoked; this time he has not publicly said whether he requested an extension. Salvadorans abroad sent home more than $10 billion in remittances last year, more than a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product, according to the World Bank Group. Deporting longtime residents who contribute to their communities is “inconceivable,” Urias said. “What type of people do we want? People who learn the language, assimilate … create work. I want the best for this country.” Asked what he will do if the status is revoked, he said, “I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t have a plan.” Building a business takes time, he said; shutting one down just takes walking away. “My responsibility is to create work. But if they don’t let me …” He trailed off, checked his phone, got in his truck, and drove to another job site.