TPS Holders Statistics in US 2026 | Countries, Numbers & Key Facts

What Is Temporary Protected Status (TPS)?

Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is a humanitarian immigration designation created by Congress under the Immigration Act of 1990 that allows the Secretary of Homeland Security to protect nationals of certain foreign countries already living in the United States from deportation, and to grant them work authorization, when conditions in their home country make safe return impossible. A country can be designated for TPS when it is experiencing armed conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary and temporary conditions — such as epidemic disease, severe economic collapse, or ongoing political violence — that would endanger returning nationals or make the country unable to handle the return of its citizens. TPS is not a path to permanent residency or citizenship. It does not grant green card status. It does not provide eligibility for most federal public assistance programs. It is, as the name describes, a strictly temporary and humanitarian protection against deportation, combined with the right to legally work. Only individuals already present in the United States when a country’s designation is announced are eligible — TPS is not a mechanism for new arrivals. Since its creation, TPS has been designated for approximately 30 countries, covering nationals from some of the world’s most instability-plagued nations, from El Salvador after a series of devastating earthquakes in 2001, to Haiti after its catastrophic 2010 earthquake, to Ukraine following Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion.

In 2026, TPS is the most contested immigration policy in the United States federal courts and one of the most consequential humanitarian programs in the federal government. As of March 31, 2025 — the most recent verified USCIS data point — approximately 1,297,635 TPS holders lived in the United States, with five countries (Venezuela, Haiti, El Salvador, Ukraine, and Honduras) accounting for 97% of all recipients. The Trump administration, since taking office on January 20, 2025, has moved aggressively to terminate TPS designations for countries representing more than one million of those holders, triggering the most extensive wave of TPS litigation in the program’s 35-year history. As of March 19–20, 2026, those termination efforts have been blocked, stayed, or challenged in every single affected country, with the US Supreme Court itself agreeing on March 16–17, 2026 to hear oral arguments in late April on the TPS terminations for Haiti and Syria — cases that could ultimately determine whether the executive branch has the unilateral authority to end TPS designations over the objections of federal courts nationwide.

Interesting TPS Facts in the US 2026

Source: Penn Wharton Budget Model (November 19, 2025), MIRA Coalition TPS Overview (December 1, 2025), American Immigration Council TPS Fact Sheet (updated March 2026), FWD.us TPS Report 2025, USCIS TPS page (updated within 3 days of March 19, 2026), NPR (February 3, 2026), SCOTUSblog (March 17, 2026), ABC News (February 3, 2026), Center for Migration Studies (CMS, 2018 CID study), Haitian Times (February 2, 2026)

The 1.3 million TPS holders living in the United States as of March 2025 represent not a single demographic but an extraordinarily diverse cross-section of the immigrant experience, united only by the fact that their home countries have been deemed too dangerous or destabilized for safe return. TPS workers comprise 8 to 10% of hours worked in certain occupations in major metro areas, and compared to US-born workers, TPS workers are 5.4 times more likely to work in building and grounds cleaning, 3.2 times more likely to work in construction, and twice as likely to work in transportation — making their contributions to the US labor market both quantitatively large and sectorally concentrated in the industries most difficult to substitute quickly. The $35.9 billion in annual GDP they generated in 2023 — documented by the rigorous Penn Wharton Budget Model analysis — is not a projection or advocacy estimate but a data-driven calculation based on FOIA-obtained USCIS records and Congressional Research Service data.

The legal landscape as of March 19–20, 2026 is defined by a single overarching reality: the Trump administration has attempted to terminate TPS for more than a million people across more than a dozen countries, and the Supreme Court agreed on March 16–17, 2026 to hear oral arguments in late April on the TPS terminations for Haiti and Syria. In an unusual procedural posture, the court deferred acting on the government’s emergency applications and will instead hear full oral argument — meaning the lower court victories for immigrants remain in place for now in these cases. This is the most significant TPS legal proceeding in the program’s 35-year history, and the court’s eventual ruling will determine whether the executive branch can end designations unilaterally, or whether the statutory framework Congress created in 1990 constrains such actions in fundamental ways.

TPS Holders by Country Statistics in 2026

Source: USCIS official TPS page (updated within 3 days of March 19, 2026 — uscis.gov/humanitarian/temporary-protected-status), MIRA Coalition TPS Overview (December 1, 2025 — USCIS Form I-821 FY2025 Q3 data), American Immigration Council TPS Fact Sheet (updated March 2026), CLINIC Recent TPS Developments (updated March 2026), National Immigration Forum TPS Fact Sheet (updated ~1 month ago, February 2026)

As of March 31, 2025, there were approximately 1,297,635 TPS holders living in the United States, distributed across the countries in this table, with five countries — Venezuela, Haiti, El Salvador, Ukraine, and Honduras — representing the vast majority. The country-by-country breakdown reveals how dramatically the legal landscape has shifted in 2025–2026. Of the 17 countries that had active TPS designations at the start of 2025, the Trump administration moved to terminate 11 — covering more than one million people. Every single termination has been challenged in federal court, and as of March 19–20, 2026, every country where the administration’s termination was challenged has at least one active court order protecting some or all beneficiaries, with the exception of Venezuela’s 2021 designation, where the Supreme Court allowed termination to take effect on October 3, 2025.

In 2025, the Trump administration took steps to end TPS protections for Venezuela, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Nepal, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Syria, South Sudan, Myanmar (Burma), and Ethiopia. The most extraordinary single moment in this timeline came on March 13, 2026 when a Massachusetts federal judge issued an order staying the Somalia TPS termination — even though the Department of Homeland Security had recently prevailed twice in the US Supreme Court in a similar case. The DHS response — “The Department of Homeland Security vehemently disagrees with this order and is working with the Department of Justice to determine next steps” — illustrates the intensity of the legal conflict still unfolding at the time of publication. On February 13, 2026, DHS announced it would also terminate TPS status for Yemen, with the effective termination date to be 60 days after the termination notice is published in the Federal Register.

TPS Holders by US State Statistics in 2026

Source: Penn Wharton Budget Model (November 19, 2025 — FOIA USCIS data), MIRA Coalition TPS Overview (December 2025), Center for Migration Studies (2018 — El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti state breakdown), Haitian Times (February 2, 2026 — Haitian TPS data), FWD.us TPS Report 2025

The geographic concentration of TPS holders tells a story that directly shapes the political and economic stakes of the program’s status. Florida alone represents 31%, or roughly 400,000 individuals — far surpassing Texas, the state with the second-largest TPS population, at 11%. The states of Florida, Texas, New York, California, and Georgia jointly account for about 60% of the total TPS population. Florida’s extraordinary share is a relatively recent development, driven primarily by the massive influx of Venezuelan and Haitian TPS recipients during the Biden administration’s expansions in 2022–2024. TPS workers generated $35.9 billion in GDP in 2023, with $10.7 billion from Florida alone, followed by Texas ($4.3B), California ($3.6B), and New York ($2.8B).

The Ohio dimension has become one of the most nationally visible case studies in TPS demographics. The city of Springfield, Ohio — a mid-sized post-industrial city of approximately 59,000 — became a focal point of the national immigration debate in 2024 when then-candidate Donald Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants in the city were eating residents’ pets. Springfield’s Haitian community, estimated at approximately 15,000 people, is primarily composed of TPS holders and their families who came to the city to fill labor shortages in local manufacturing, healthcare, and food service. Faith leaders and hundreds of congregants in Springfield sang and prayed together in support of Haitian migrants on the eve of the TPS termination deadline of February 3, 2026, in scenes that captured the human dimension of the national legal and policy debate. The state of Ohio is home to approximately 14,000 Haitian TPS holders statewide, who contribute $160 million annually to the state economy.

TPS Economic Contribution Statistics in the US 2026

Source: Penn Wharton Budget Model (November 19, 2025), FWD.us TPS Economy Report 2025, Haitian Times (February 2, 2026 — citing research coalition data), American Immigration Council TPS Fact Sheet (2026), Center for Migration Studies CID study (2018)

TPS workers generated $35.9 billion in GDP in 2023, according to Penn Wharton’s rigorous economic model — a figure that makes the TPS workforce a larger contributor to US GDP than many entire industries. The $35.9 billion is a flow measure: it represents annual economic output attributable to TPS workers’ labor across all sectors of the US economy. To contextualize it: that single figure is roughly equivalent to the entire annual GDP of a mid-sized US state such as Wyoming or North Dakota. Over 700,000 TPS recipients were expected to lose legal status by the end of 2025, including 550,000 who are legally working, and PWBM estimated that withdrawing their work authorization could add to labor shortages in construction, cleaning, and hospitality, especially in Florida, Texas, and New York.

The sector-level data from FWD.us — based on analysis of census and government data — paints the clearest picture of where TPS workers are embedded in the US economy. An estimated 570,000 TPS holders are working in the US labor force, including 95,000 in leisure and hospitality, 90,000 in construction, 85,000 in business services, 80,000 in wholesale and retail trade, and 70,000 in manufacturing. These are not marginal or easily replaced labor pools. In the construction sector specifically, where TPS workers are 3.2 times more likely to be employed than US-born workers and where the US already faces a structural skilled labor shortage of approximately 500,000 workers, the sudden removal of 90,000 workers would compound existing supply constraints directly impacting housing construction costs and timelines. About 200,000 Haitian TPS holders are part of the US workforce, filling vital roles in industries struggling with labor shortages, including 15,000 agricultural workers, 13,000 nursing assistants, and 8,000 caregivers — roles in the healthcare sector where the US already projects a shortage of over 3 million healthcare workers by 2028.

TPS Court Cases & Legal Battles Statistics in 2026

Source: USCIS official TPS page (updated within 3 days of March 19, 2026), CLINIC Recent TPS Developments (updated March 2026), National Immigration Forum TPS Fact Sheet (updated February 2026), SCOTUSblog (March 17, 2026 — “Justices will hear argument on Trump administration’s removal of protected status for Syrian and Haitian nationals”), ABC News (February 3, 2026), NPR (February 3, 2026), Jackson Lewis Immigration Blog (February 3, 2026), National TPS Alliance (March 2026)

The TPS legal landscape in March 2026 is without precedent in the program’s 35-year history. Every major termination action taken by the Trump administration has been challenged in federal court, and every challenge — with the single exception of Venezuela, where the Supreme Court granted the government emergency relief in October 2025 — has succeeded in at least temporarily blocking the termination. The Supreme Court on March 16–17, 2026 agreed to consider the Trump administration’s arguments for ending temporary immigration protections for people from Haiti and Syria, setting oral arguments for the second week of the April argument session. In an important distinction from its prior Venezuela decisions, the court did not immediately grant emergency stays in favor of the administration, meaning the lower court victories for immigrants remain in place for now — Haitian and Syrian TPS holders will retain their protections at least until the court rules, likely in June 2026.

On January 28, 2026, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a decision holding that DHS lacked statutory authority to “vacate” prior TPS designations for Haiti and Venezuela and then terminate TPS early based on those vacaturs. This ruling — covering the core legal theory the Trump administration used to accelerate terminations beyond the normal timeline — has major structural implications across all pending cases. However, Venezuela TPS is not restored, because a Supreme Court stay remains in effect pending completion of appellate review. The practical result of this complex legal web: some Venezuelan TPS holders were detained and deported under the policy because the Supreme Court allowed it to take effect, even though a federal judge has now ruled the action unlawful — and that harm is irreversible. The Somalia ruling of March 13, 2026 — where a single Massachusetts judge stayed the termination even though DHS had recently prevailed twice in the Supreme Court in a similar case — encapsulates the current state of play: an administration that wins at the Supreme Court on emergency applications, but loses at every level of the lower courts on the merits.

TPS Holder Demographic Statistics in the US 2026

Source: Center for Migration Studies CID Statistical & Demographic Profile (2018 — El Sal/Hon/Haiti deep study), FWD.us TPS Economy 2025, American Immigration Council TPS Overview (March 2026), USCIS official TPS page, 2021 US Supreme Court — Sanchez v. Mayorkas ruling on TPS green card eligibility

The demographic data assembled by the Center for Migration Studies — the most rigorous academic study of the TPS population — reveals a population that defies the characterization of temporary. More than 50% of El Salvadoran and Honduran TPS beneficiaries have resided in the United States for 20 or more years, having arrived in the late 1990s and early 2000s following Hurricane Mitch (1998) and the El Salvador earthquakes (2001). In that time, they have built households, raised children, taken out mortgages, and embedded themselves in industries and communities across the country. The 273,000 US-citizen children born to TPS holders from just three countries — El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti — represent what immigration lawyers call “mixed-status families”: households where a US-citizen child would face the choice of leaving their country of birth or being separated from a parent if TPS terminations are ultimately upheld. About 68,000, or 22 percent, of the TPS population from El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti arrived as children under the age of 16 — a group that has now lived in the US for a majority of their lives.

The 2021 Supreme Court ruling in Sanchez v. Mayorkas was a defining legal constraint on TPS holders’ path to permanency. The court ruled 8-1 that a TPS holder who originally entered the United States without inspection is not eligible to apply for a green card from within the United States, even if they would otherwise qualify through a family or employment petition. For the large share of TPS holders who entered without inspection — often fleeing emergencies where legal entry was not possible — this ruling means that applying for a green card requires leaving the US and attending a consular interview abroad, which for many triggers 3 to 10-year bars on re-entry based on the length of their prior unlawful presence. In practical terms, this means that a TPS recipient who initially entered the United States without inspection must depart the country to have a visa processed at a consular post — and for many TPS holders, a departure to have a visa interview would trigger bars to re-entry for up to 10 years. Combined with the program’s explicit non-path-to-permanency design, this creates a legal trap for long-term TPS holders that has no resolution under current US immigration law without congressional action.

Disclaimer: The data reports published on The Global Files are sourced from publicly available materials considered reliable. While efforts are made to ensure accuracy, no guarantees are provided regarding completeness or reliability. The Global Files is not liable for any errors, omissions, or damages resulting from the use of these reports.