Twenty-seven years ago, on the first day of October in 1998, Hurricane Mitch roared into Honduras, skidded to a stop and in an unprecedented pause for a hurricane, stalled over the country for three relentless days, dumping more than 75 inches of rain on the country. The flooding that ensued killed over 7,000 people, left one in every ten Hondurans homeless, and wiped out nearly every bridge and paved road in the country. For months afterward, my husband Kurt and I moved through the chaos around us, asking each other the same question over and over: “How will Honduras ever recover?”

Just a few months after Mitch’s devastation, the US announced that Hondurans living and working in the US without papers would be granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Not a visa, but a humanitarian safeguard offered in times of war or natural disaster, TPS became a lifeline for thousands of Honduras—the collective millions of dollars they were able to send home to their devastated families played a vital role in rebuilding the country.

Last week, the US government announced that on September 8, 2025 Honduras’ TPS status would be cancelled, which means the 52,000 Hondurans who have been living and working legally in the US have overnight become subject to deportation. 

You may be thinking, “OK. But TPS was not meant to be permanent–‘Temporary’ is right in the name.”  And you would be right. TPS was designed to be a temporary measure. But over the past 27 years, the heads of Homeland Security have renewed TPS for Honduras 13 times.  The “temporary” status has become in effect, permanent, and its cancellation after 27 years will upend life for tens of thousands of Hondurans.

What makes this even harder is that TPS includes a provision that prohibits Hondurans from returning to their home countries while in the US; so for more than two decades, thousands of Honduran men and women have built their lives in the U.S.—becoming homeowners, entrepreneurs, grandparents, community members, and church leaders. Cancelling TPS means that their lives in the US are over, but Honduras is in almost every way an unfamiliar place.

Programs like TPS were never designed to stretch across decades. The decision to continually renew this temporary program (based in part on the assessment that TPSers were an asset and not a threat to US communities) meant that these long-term workers had no path to permanent residency. They were allowed to work and pay taxes, but never gained the security of legally belonging. And now they face the uncertainty of being deported from what has been their home for the past 27 years. 

The cancellation of TPS after 27 years is a stark reminder of how urgently our government leaders need to come together to overhaul U.S. immigration policy. We can craft laws that both uphold border security and open doors for hard-working people–that strengthen both our economy and the economies of their families back home. It is possible if there is political will. And if we don’t find a way to do it, we will have missed an opportunity that would benefit us all.

*In my last blog I promised to talk about the ways Hondurans can obtain legal permission to work in the US.  But I’ve decided to hold off on that one for now to focus on the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program and the impact its cancellation will have on thousands of Hondurans.