Temporary Protected Status Statistics 2026 | Recipients, Rulings & Key Facts

What Is Temporary Protected Status in America?

Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is a humanitarian immigration designation established by Congress under the Immigration Act of 1990 that allows nationals of specific countries experiencing armed conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary and temporary conditions to live and work legally in the United States without fear of deportation — for as long as their home country’s designation remains in force. TPS does not provide a pathway to a green card or citizenship on its own, but it gives recipients the right to obtain Employment Authorization Documents (EADs), travel authorization, and full protection from removal proceedings. Since its creation more than three decades ago, TPS has been granted 33 times across administrations of both parties — from President George H.W. Bush, who oversaw six designations, to President Biden, who issued eight — and has served as a critical legal lifeline for people from nations as varied as El Salvador, Somalia, Ukraine, Haiti, and Venezuela who were already present in the United States when catastrophic conditions made their return impossible.

In 2026, TPS sits at the center of one of the most legally turbulent and politically consequential immigration battles in American history. At its peak in early 2025, the program covered approximately 1.3 million people from 17 countries — more than double the under-500,000 recipients in 2017. Since January 20, 2025, the Trump administration has sought to terminate TPS designations for 13 of those 17 countries, a campaign of unprecedented scale that has been simultaneously contested in federal district courts, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court. As of May 2, 2026, the TPS landscape is a patchwork of effective terminations, court-ordered stays, pending appeals, and congressional discharge petitions — a legal battlefield where the status of more than one million people shifts with each new judicial ruling. The statistics in this article document exactly where things stand — by country, by state, by workforce sector, by court, and by the economic stakes — based on the most current verified data available as of today.

📊 Key TPS Facts in the US 2026 — At a Glance

Source: USCIS (official TPS data, March 31, 2025); KFF “Recent Changes to Temporary Protected Status Designations” (updated May 1, 2026); Penn Wharton Budget Model (November 19, 2025); FWD.us Economic Contributions Report (April 22, 2026); American Immigration Council; National Immigration Forum TPS Fact Sheet (updated April 2026); Fortune (April 23, 2026); Illinois Legal Aid Online (March 4, 2026); Congress.gov CRS RS20844

The twenty facts above capture the fundamental tension at the heart of Temporary Protected Status in 2026: a program that has grown into a major pillar of the US labor force and economy is being systematically dismantled by executive action at the same rate that federal courts are blocking those dismantlements. The 160% growth in TPS recipients between 2017 and 2025 — from under 500,000 to 1.3 million — reflects real expansions of humanitarian need across the globe during that period. The Trump administration’s attempt to terminate 13 of 17 TPS designations is the most aggressive rollback of the program in its 35-year history, and the dual Supreme Court rulings permitting those terminations to proceed represent an extraordinary intervention in what is typically a lower-court administrative law battle. Yet the $35.9 billion in annual GDP and $8 billion in annual taxes contributed by TPS holders — numbers that sit in the congressional record and in peer-reviewed economic analyses — make the economic stakes of those terminations impossible to separate from the humanitarian ones.

TPS Recipients by Country in the US in 2026

📊 TPS Holders by Country of Origin — As of March 31, 2025 (USCIS Data)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  Venezuela   ████████████████████████████████████████████  ~600,000+ (47%)
  Haiti       ████████████████████████                      330,735   (25%)
  El Salvador █████████████████                             170,125   (13%)
  Ukraine     ████████                                      101,150   (8%)
  Honduras    █████                                          ~72,000  (4%)
  All others  ███                                            ~39,000  (<3%)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  Total: ~1.3 million | Source: USCIS / Penn Wharton Budget Model (March 31, 2025)

Source: USCIS Official TPS Data (March 31, 2025); Penn Wharton Budget Model “550,000 Workers Lose Status by End of 2025” (November 19, 2025); KFF “Recent Changes to Temporary Protected Status Designations” (May 1, 2026); Illinois Legal Aid Online TPS Country Updates (March 4, 2026); Wikipedia TPS (updated May 1, 2026); Congress.gov CRS RS20844

The country-by-country TPS data as of March 31, 2025 — the most recent USCIS official count — makes the demographic concentration of the program unmistakably clear. Venezuela and Haiti together account for 72% of all TPS recipients, and the top five countries — Venezuela, Haiti, El Salvador, Ukraine, and Honduras — account for 97%, leaving the remaining 12 designated countries collectively representing less than 3% of the total population. This concentration has both demographic and political significance: the Trump administration’s priority targets for TPS termination have been the largest-population countries, with Venezuela’s two designations covering an estimated 600,000+ people and Haiti’s covering 330,735 individuals bearing the brunt of the legal battle. El Salvador’s 170,125 TPS holders represent some of the longest-tenured recipients in the program — many Salvadorans have held TPS since the January and February 2001 earthquakes, meaning some recipients have lived in TPS status for over 24 consecutive years, building entire careers, businesses, families, and community roots in the United States during that time.

The Ukraine designation stands in sharp political contrast to the others: 101,150 Ukrainians held TPS as of March 31, 2025, extended through October 19, 2026 — and the Trump administration has not moved to terminate Ukraine’s designation, making it the most notable exception in the administration’s otherwise sweeping termination campaign. Sudan’s TPS also remains extended through October 19, 2026 without a termination move. The political asymmetry between the treatment of Ukrainian TPS holders and those from countries like Venezuela, Haiti, and Somalia has been widely noted by immigration scholars and advocacy organizations. Meanwhile, the 12 smaller-country designations collectively covering ~39,000 individuals include countries like Lebanon (effective through May 27, 2026), Liberia (through June 30, 2026), and Yemen (whose termination is expected to take effect in May 2026) — all moving toward expiration or termination on their own timelines independent of the major litigation battles.

TPS Terminations & Court Rulings Timeline in the US in 2026

📊 TPS Terminations & Legal Battles — Key Timeline (2025–2026)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  Feb 5, 2025      DHS terminates Venezuela 2023 designation
  Mar 31, 2025     Judge Chen (N.D. Cal.) blocks Venezuela 2023 termination
  May 19, 2025     Supreme Court allows Venezuela 2023 termination to proceed
  Aug 5, 2025      Nepal TPS terminated
  Sep 5, 2025      Judge Chen blocks both Venezuela & Haiti TPS terminations
  Sep 8, 2025      Honduras TPS terminated
  Oct 3, 2025      Supreme Court allows Venezuela (2023) termination immediately
  Nov 7, 2025      Venezuela 2021 designation TPS terminated
  Nov 19, 2025     Syria TPS stay issued (termination Nov 21 blocked)
  Nov 28, 2025     DHS announces Haiti termination — Feb 3, 2026 end date
  Dec 31, 2025     N.D. Cal. vacates Nepal & Honduras terminations
  Jan 30, 2026     D. Mass. stays Ethiopia TPS termination
  Feb 2, 2026      D.C. judge blocks Haiti termination — "arbitrary and capricious"
  Feb 9, 2026      9th Cir. allows Nepal & Honduras terminations to proceed
  Mar 13, 2026     D. Mass. stays Somalia TPS termination
  Mar 27, 2026     House discharge petition — Haiti TPS — 218 signatures
  Apr 7, 2026      Venezuela 2023 TPS officially terminated (April 7 effective date)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Source: National Immigration Forum TPS Fact Sheet (April 2026); USCIS Official Alerts (March–April 2026); KFF “Recent Changes to Temporary Protected Status Designations” (May 1, 2026); Wikipedia Temporary Protected Status (May 1, 2026); American Immigration Council Overview (2026)

The legal timeline surrounding TPS in 2025 and 2026 is one of the most active and consequential immigration law dockets in recent American history — and the pace of judicial decisions has been matched only by the pace of executive action trying to stay ahead of court intervention. The pattern that emerges from the chronology is consistent: the Trump administration announces a termination, a federal district court blocks it within days or weeks, the 9th Circuit or Supreme Court is then asked to stay the district court order, and the outcome in the higher courts has been split — with the Supreme Court ruling in the administration’s favor twice on Venezuela (May 19, 2025 and October 3, 2025), while district courts have continued to block Ethiopia, Haiti, Somalia, Syria, South Sudan, and Burma terminations on Administrative Procedures Act grounds, finding the terminations “arbitrary and capricious” for failing to adequately consider conditions in those countries.

The February 2, 2026 ruling by a federal judge in Washington, D.C. blocking Haiti’s TPS termination on APA grounds — just two days before the February 3 termination date — is the most dramatically timed judicial intervention in the entire sequence, and the judge’s finding that DHS Secretary Noem “failed to fully consider dangerous conditions in Haiti” mirrors the legal standard that has become the central battleground in every TPS termination case. The March 27, 2026 milestone in which the Haiti TPS discharge petition collected the required 218 House signatures — including all Democrats and four Republicans — to force a floor vote on extending Haiti’s TPS designation represents the first time Congress has moved to legislatively override a TPS termination decision. As of May 2, 2026, that vote had not yet been scheduled, but the bipartisan threshold of 218 signatures is constitutionally significant: it means a majority of the House of Representatives has formally gone on record in favor of protecting Haitian TPS holders, regardless of which party controls the chamber’s agenda.

TPS Recipients by State in the US in 2026

📊 TPS Holders by State of Residence — Top States (March 2025 USCIS Data)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  Florida      ████████████████████████████████████  31% (~400,000)
  Texas        ████████████                          11% (~143,000)
  New York     ████████████                          ~11%
  California   ████████████                          ~10%
  Georgia      ████████                              ~5–7%
  ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Top 5 states together = ~60–65% of all US TPS holders
  Florida alone = nearly half of all Venezuelan TPS holders
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Source: Penn Wharton Budget Model “Demographic and Labor Market Profile of TPS Beneficiaries” (November 19, 2025); Congress.gov CRS RS20844 Table 3 “Individuals with Temporary Protected Status by State of Residence”; KFF analysis of 2024 American Community Survey data

The geographic concentration of TPS holders in the United States is one of the most striking features of the program’s demographic footprint in 2026 — and it has shifted dramatically over the past five years. Florida alone accounts for 31% of all US TPS holders — approximately 400,000 individuals — a dominance driven almost entirely by the explosive growth of Venezuelan TPS recipients in South Florida following the 2021 and 2023 Venezuela designations. This represents a dramatic change from 2020, when Florida, Texas, New York, and California each held roughly equal 15% shares of the total TPS population. The surge in Venezuelan migration to South Florida and the consequent concentration of Venezuelan TPS holders there has transformed Florida into the unambiguous center of the TPS population in the United States. Penn Wharton Budget Model notes that this geographic concentration also means the economic impact of terminations will be heavily concentrated: Florida stands to lose the most TPS workforce contribution of any state, with the $10.7 billion in annual GDP generated by Florida’s TPS workers representing approximately 30% of the total national TPS economic output.

The Texas ($4.3 billion in TPS GDP), California ($3.6 billion), and New York ($2.8 billion) figures confirm that the economic impact of TPS terminations is not a niche concern limited to a few border communities — it is a major economic force in the country’s four largest states simultaneously. TPS workers in these states are concentrated in specific labor market sectors that are already experiencing structural labor shortages: building and grounds cleaning, construction, transportation, food preparation, and healthcare support. The state-level economic data collected by Penn Wharton through 2023 census and administrative records provides the most granular picture available of where TPS workers live, what they contribute, and where the workforce gaps would materialize if terminations proceed without legal challenge or legislative intervention.

TPS Economic Contributions & Workforce Statistics in the US in 2026

📊 TPS Holders — Economic & Workforce Contribution (2023–2026 Data)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  Annual GDP contribution               $35.9 billion (Penn Wharton, 2023)
  Annual spending power                 $29 billion (FWD.us, April 2026)
  Annual tax contributions              ~$8 billion (FWD.us, April 2026)
  Total economic contribution (1990–2026) $262 billion (FWD.us, April 2026)
  Employment rate (TPS holders)          94.6% (American Immigration Council)
  Entrepreneurship rate                  14.5% vs. 9.3% US-born average
  Construction sector overrepresentation 3.2x more likely than US-born workers
  Cleaning sector overrepresentation     5.4x more likely than US-born workers
  Transportation sector                  2x more likely than US-born workers
  Estimated workforce jobs filled        ~740,000 workers aged 18+ (KFF)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Source: Penn Wharton Budget Model “Demographic and Labor Market Profile of TPS Beneficiaries” (November 19, 2025); FWD.us “New FWD.us Report Highlights Economic Contributions of TPS Holders” (April 22, 2026); American Immigration Council “Spotlight on the Economic Contributions of TPS Holders”; KFF “Recent Changes to Temporary Protected Status Designations” (May 1, 2026); Fortune “TPS holders in US add $29 billion to the economy every year and pay $8 billion in taxes” (April 23, 2026)

The economic case for TPS is documented, peer-reviewed, and quantified to a level that most immigration debates never reach — and the numbers released just nine days ago by FWD.us in their April 22, 2026 economic contributions report provide the most current picture available. TPS holders contribute $29 billion in annual spending power, pay approximately $8 billion in annual taxes, and have collectively injected $262 billion into the US economy since 1990 — figures that were published in the same week that the Supreme Court was being asked to schedule oral arguments on Haiti and Syria TPS terminations. The Penn Wharton Budget Model’s November 2025 analysis provides the GDP dimension: $35.9 billion in annual output attributable to TPS workers, with Florida’s share alone at $10.7 billion — more than the entire annual GDP contribution of TPS workers in Texas, California, and New York combined. These are not trivial sums: for context, $35.9 billion is roughly equivalent to the entire annual economic output of a mid-sized US metropolitan area.

The workforce sector data is perhaps even more consequential for practical economic planning. TPS workers are 5.4 times more likely to work in building and grounds cleaning than US-born workers, 3.2 times more concentrated in construction, and twice as concentrated in transportation. In major metropolitan areas, TPS workers account for 8 to 10% of all hours worked in these specific occupational categories — a penetration level that means terminations without workforce replacement will produce measurable disruptions in sectors already facing structural labor shortages. The American Immigration Council’s analysis adds the entrepreneurship dimension: 14.5% of TPS holders are self-employed business owners, compared to 9.3% of US-born workers — meaning TPS holders are not just employees filling labor gaps but business owners creating jobs, paying business taxes, and building the commercial infrastructure of their communities. The 94.6% employment rate among TPS holders is nearly 32 percentage points higher than the overall US labor force participation rate of approximately 63%, confirming these are not passive recipients of humanitarian protection but extraordinarily active economic contributors.

TPS & Health Coverage Impact in the US in 2026

📊 TPS Holders — Health Coverage & Healthcare Access (2025–2026)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  TPS holders: ACA Marketplace access        Currently eligible (ending Jan 1, 2027)
  TPS holders: Medicare access               Currently eligible (ending Jan 4, 2027)
  TPS holders: Medicaid eligibility          INELIGIBLE (already excluded)
  TPS holders: CHIP eligibility              INELIGIBLE (already excluded)
  Reconciliation law (2025): ACA loss        TPS holders lose ACA subsidized coverage Jan 1, 2027
  Reconciliation law (2025): Medicare loss   TPS holders lose Medicare Jan 4, 2027
  Venezuelan TPS holders w/ prior deportation bar  Among highest uninsured risk
  Loss of TPS → loss of work authorization  → loss of employer-sponsored insurance
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Source: KFF “Recent Changes to Temporary Protected Status Designations: Potential Impacts on Health and Health Care” (May 1, 2026 — published yesterday); KFF analysis of Congressional Research Service reports and 2024 American Community Survey data

The healthcare and coverage dimension of TPS terminations — documented in KFF’s May 1, 2026 analysis, published just yesterday — adds a layer of humanitarian and public health consequence that goes beyond the labor market and economic data. TPS holders are currently eligible to purchase subsidized health insurance through ACA Marketplace exchanges, and many working TPS holders also access employer-sponsored health insurance through their jobs. But both pathways are on a collision course with simultaneous legal and legislative changes: the 2025 reconciliation law, enacted during the current congressional session, strips TPS holders of subsidized ACA Marketplace coverage starting January 1, 2027, and removes Medicare access no later than January 4, 2027 — changes that will layer on top of any TPS status terminations that take effect before those dates. TPS holders have always been ineligible for Medicaid and CHIP, meaning the ACA Marketplace has been the primary coverage pathway for this population.

The coverage loss cascade is mechanically straightforward but practically devastating: a TPS holder who loses status loses their Employment Authorization Document, which means they lose work authorization, which typically means they lose employer-sponsored health insurance, and under the 2025 reconciliation law they will also lose ACA Marketplace eligibility starting in 2027. KFF estimates that immigrants likely to have TPS from 16 of the 17 countries make up approximately 740,000 workers aged 18 and older in the US — nearly all of whom will face this coverage loss cascade if terminations proceed. The public health implications extend beyond the TPS holders themselves: uninsured individuals defer preventive care, use emergency departments as primary care, and generate uncompensated care costs that are ultimately absorbed by hospitals, state Medicaid emergency programs, and local health systems. The March 2026 Supreme Court scheduling of oral arguments on Haiti and Syria TPS means the next definitive legal turning point for coverage for these populations is expected before the end of the 2025–2026 Supreme Court term.

TPS Legislative Action & Political Context in the US in 2026

📊 TPS Legislative & Political Landscape — 2025–2026
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  TPS designations since 1990 (all parties)    33 new designations
  George H.W. Bush designations               6
  Clinton designations                         10
  George W. Bush designations                 2
  Obama designations                           7
  Biden designations                           8
  Trump (1st term) designations               0 new (terminated several)
  Trump (2nd term) designations               0 new (terminated/moved to end 13 of 17)
  Haiti discharge petition signatures (Mar 27) 218 (all Dems + 4 Republicans)
  Venezuela TPS Act of 2025                    Introduced in Congress (pending)
  Supreme Court — Haiti & Syria arguments      Scheduled 2026 term
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Source: FWD.us “New Report Highlights Economic Contributions of TPS Holders” (April 22, 2026); National Immigration Forum TPS Fact Sheet (updated April 2026); Fortune (April 23, 2026); KFF “Recent Changes to Temporary Protected Status Designations” (May 1, 2026); Penn Wharton Budget Model (November 19, 2025); Wikipedia TPS (May 1, 2026)

The legislative and political landscape around TPS in 2026 reflects a program that is simultaneously under its most severe executive assault in 35 years and generating its most bipartisan congressional defense in the same period. Since its creation under the Immigration Act of 1990, TPS has functioned as genuinely bipartisan humanitarian policy — the Clinton administration issued 10 new designations, the George H.W. Bush administration issued 6, and even the George W. Bush administration issued 2 — reflecting a pre-partisan consensus that temporary protection from deportation to actively dangerous countries was a reasonable humanitarian standard regardless of which party held the White House. The Trump second-term approach of terminating 13 of 17 active designations represents a categorical departure from that bipartisan norm, and the emergence of 4 House Republicans joining all Democrats to sign the Haiti TPS discharge petition on March 27, 2026 suggests that the political consensus for at least some TPS protections extends modestly into the Republican conference.

The Supreme Court’s upcoming oral arguments on Haiti and Syria TPS — expected during the 2025–2026 term — will likely produce the most authoritative legal ruling on TPS termination authority in the program’s history. The central question the justices will address is whether a Secretary of Homeland Security who terminates a TPS designation must adequately consider current country conditions under the Administrative Procedures Act, or whether the Secretary has essentially unconstrained discretion. Lower courts have split on this question, with district courts finding APA violations in multiple terminations and the 9th Circuit and Supreme Court accepting the administration’s position in the Venezuela cases. The outcome of the Supreme Court’s Haiti and Syria case will resolve that split and determine whether the remaining court-stayed terminations — covering Burma, Ethiopia, Somalia, and South Sudan — can proceed. For over one million TPS holders and the US communities, employers, and state economies that depend on their labor, that ruling may be the most consequential immigration decision of the decade.

Disclaimer: This research report is compiled from publicly available sources. While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, no representation or warranty, express or implied, is given as to the completeness or reliability of the information. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions, losses, or damages of any kind arising from the use of this report.

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