José Urías lost his commercial driver’s license on Wednesday. Not because he did anything wrong. Because the federal designation that let him work legally in this country for a quarter century was scheduled to expire on Tuesday, September 9, and the agencies that issue and renew things like a CDL had no instruction about what came next.
“Yo ayer perdí mi licencia comercial, lo que es el CDL,” he told Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra. I lost my commercial license yesterday. “Estuviera perdiendo mi negocio, como muchos compañeros.” I would be losing my business, like many colleagues. He called the situation what Salvadorans call it: “agrio y dulce, porque no tenemos ni sí ni no.” Bitter and sweet, because we have neither a yes nor a no.
The limbo
Temporary Protected Status for El Salvador has existed since the 2001 earthquakes. Roughly 7,350 Salvadorans in Massachusetts hold it, by a UMass Boston estimate, concentrated in Chelsea, Revere, East Boston, Everett, Somerville and Lynn. Many have been here more than twenty years. They have work permits, businesses, mortgages, children who are citizens.
On September 3, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reminded employers that the designation and its benefits “are set to terminate on Sept. 9, 2026.” On September 9 the Department of Homeland Security said that until a formal announcement is made, Salvadorans present under TPS “retain protection.” So the status did not end. It also was not extended. It simply continues, day to day, until somebody in Washington decides otherwise, and nobody has said when that will be.
Attorney Kathia Quirós explained on Telemundo the rule that produces this result. Federal law requires the government to tell TPS holders what will happen to their status 60 days before it ends. When the government misses that deadline and the expiration date passes, the law provides for an automatic six-month extension. So the protection is real. The paperwork that proves it to a Registry of Motor Vehicles clerk, or an employer running an I-9 check, or a bank, is another matter. That is how a man with a legal right to work loses his CDL on a Wednesday.
The city manager’s view
Fidel Maltez did not talk about it as an immigration issue. He talked about it as an economic one. “Es imposible mantener los negocios abiertos, es imposible planear,” he said. It is impossible to keep businesses open, impossible to plan. “Esto está afectando no solo a la gente que tiene el TPS, sino a la economía en grande.” This is affecting not only the people who have TPS but the economy at large.
He has the numbers to back that up. Last fall the Globe reported that enrollment in the Chelsea Public Schools had fallen from 6,094 to 5,750, about 350 students, in a single year as families left or kept children home, and that the drop opened a $6.6 million hole in the school budget because state aid follows the student. Newcomer enrollment fell 74 percent. This spring the city cut dozens of school positions and loosened its affordable housing rules to chase development revenue, and Maltez described the whole picture as “a perfect storm.” The TPS cliff is one more front.
The leaders Telemundo spoke to asked for a two- or three-year extension and said they would keep pressing Washington until they get a definite answer. Attorney Miryam Cissero’s advice to individual families was more immediate: get legal advice now, put documents in order, and have a family plan written down before making any large decision.
What the state can and cannot do
The PROTECT Act, which Governor Healey signed at La Colaborativa in Chelsea on August 5 and whose main provisions took effect this week, changes how Massachusetts police, hospitals and employers deal with federal immigration enforcement. It does not touch TPS. That is a federal designation and only the federal government can extend it. What the state law does do is bar local police from asking about status and require employers to give 48 hours’ notice of a federal I-9 inspection, which is precisely the kind of paperwork check that a lapsed TPS document would fail.
Federal enforcement has not paused for the paperwork confusion. Massachusetts saw 572 ICE arrests in July, according to figures WBUR obtained. The Chelsea District Court saw 10 ICE arrests in the first two months of this year, down from 57 in the same stretch of 2025.
For a TPS holder in Chelsea this week, the practical situation is this. Your status is valid under the automatic extension. Your employer is entitled to rely on that. If a state agency or a bank refuses to, an immigration attorney or La Colaborativa can help you document it. And the men and women who own the trucks and the shops on Broadway are waiting, like Urías, for a yes or a no.