/>iFrom work authorization revocation to TPS expiration, the Trump administration is rapidly altering the landscape of immigration laws, and employers are struggling to keep up and remain compliant.
CONTENT
Michael Neifach
Office Managing Principal, Washington, D.C. Region
We are going to be talking about TPS and parolees and the recent actions by the Trump administration that have limited the availability of TPS and parolee work authorization over the last several months. It's created a lot of confusion out there for employers. We get calls regularly about individuals who are work-authorized from certain countries and under the TPS. Are they still authorized to work? It’ll be helpful to talk through first by starting with an overview of the primary countries that are covered by TPS and when those statuses are going to expire.
Marissa, can you take us through a little bit about where things stand?
Marissa Prianti
Associate, White Plains, New York
The primary countries of concern with Temporary Protected Status are Haiti, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Nepal. To start with, in Haiti, pursuant to pending federal litigation, the program is currently extended until February 3rd, 2026. This means that individuals have TPS and work authorization until that date. Again, it could change depending upon the outcome of litigation, but that's the status as of now.
With regard to Venezuela, there were two different designations, one in 2021 and one in 2023. The 2023 designation is completely terminated for those individuals. They no longer have the TPS or work authorization. For individuals who registered under the 2021 designation, their TPS and their work authorization will expire on September 10th. There has been a letter circulating among many immigration attorneys arguing that the program will be extended until March due to some regulatory arguments. We are advising clients that they should not employ individuals with Venezuela TPS work authorizations beyond September 10th, 2025. We believe that the Department of Homeland Security would likely say that these individuals were not work authorized beyond that date in the event of an I-9 investigation.
With regard to Nicaragua, Honduras, and Nepal as well, they were previously going to be extended until November 18th, 2025, pursuant to pending litigation as a result of a recent Ninth Circuit decision. Unfortunately, for Nicaragua and Honduras, the expiration dates have been put back to September 8th, 2025, and Nepal's date has now expired on August 20th, 2025. That is a brief overview of where things stand with the TPS countries.
Last thing I want to mention is that we verify employers have the capacity to run these “status change reports” from their E-Verify accounts. What we are seeing is that a lot of individuals who are covered under a humanitarian parole program for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, whose program has been entirely terminated, are showing up having their work authorizations revoked on these status reports. It is very important that employers who participate in E-Verify run these reports because DHS will not consider not running the report as an excuse for continuing to employ these individuals pursuant to those work authorizations.
There has been a lot of confusion surrounding this humanitarian parole program, so I'll hand it over to Michael to discuss that further.
Neifach
The humanitarian parole program that has really been an issue is the CHNV program. That's Cuban, Haitians, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans. As Marissa said, it was terminated by the Trump administration. There are hundreds of thousands of individuals who fall within these. These were individuals who were paroled into the U.S. by the Biden administration. They got two years of work authorization, and those work authorizations would be designated by C11 on the EAD.
When this program was paroled, there was immediate litigation that ran its course. The Supreme Court finally said that the administration can end that program. We were getting questions from employers, well, how do I know if my employees fall within that program or not? Should I go back, start looking at, and doing an audit to find C11s? Remember, also, some employers don't keep copies of the documents. It was not an easy process at all. Really, the employers were just hamstrung on what to do.
The administration then started to issue letters to individuals, but not to employers. We were getting questions from employers saying, I'm being told by an employee, I just received this letter that says I don't have work authorization. What should I do? Our advice is and continues to be that if you receive notification or notice that your employee, if it looks like a valid document, is no longer authorized to work, you have to take steps to re-verify the employee and see if they have some other work authorization. If not, you're going to have to terminate them. Those are the steps you should take.
Then, the administration started to issue, for E-Verify employers, case status updates that indicated that certain individuals no longer had work authorization. If you were an E-Verify employer and your employee had been verified or onboarded using a C11 EAD that was then being revoked, you could receive notification. The government most recently said that they're no longer going to do those individual ones, and instead, employers need to run case reports periodically. We were getting questions about how often I need to run those reports. There's really no set update on how often to run those reports because when you run those reports, you will now see a list of anybody who was E-Verified using one of the work authorization documents that may have been revoked. Gradually, the government has put guidance online, and we're seeing that they're updating the information every two or three weeks. We've seen several updates from the government, and the best course of action is probably to run those reports weekly to see if there are any names that have been added. Certainly, within that two to three-week period, it makes sense for employers to run an update. For those who are using third-party vendors and don't have direct access, you'll have to rely on your vendor to update the system and to give you those reports. Most vendors are doing this, and if you work with your vendor, you can get that information through them.
Similar to when you were getting notifications individually from an employee saying, I received this letter, if you're receiving that update through E-Verify, indicating that their work authorization is no longer valid, you need to make sure the reports include the EAD number. You need to make sure that it's the same number because there are instances where somebody may have been verified initially through a C11 EAD that's been revoked, but since that time, they may have brought you another EAD. They may have applied for asylum or some other status that has not been revoked. You need to make sure when you get that information that you're matching it up. If it matches, and it looks like the verified notices that say this work authorization was revoked, then you need to be proactive and re-verify that employee.
If they don't have something that's valid, a new EAD or some other list A or C document that they can show that they're work authorized, you're going to have to terminate them. This keeps evolving. A lot of these deadlines are based on litigation and preliminary injunctions that were filed. It’s important to stay tuned and to see where all of this litigation goes, both for the CHNV, other parole statuses, and TPS.
Marissa, anything else that is important for employers to understand?
Prianti
I would just add, as Michael said, we get a ton of questions from employers almost every day. It is really important to reach out to immigration counsel because the answer is not always obvious when it comes to these work authorization documents. The last thing you want to do is inadvertently terminate somebody who is, in fact, work-authorized and potentially open yourself up to a discrimination claim. It can be just as bad, if not worse, than continuing to employ somebody who you think is work-authorized but actually is not. Again, it is very important to double-check with counsel.
