Losing Status:
An Estimated 3.5 Million Previously Protected Immigrants in the U.S. Are Projected to Lose Status by 2028

Many also have government-authorized work permits. In 2025, temporarily protected immigrants made up an estimated 3.7 million workers in the labor force, especially in key industries like Construction, Leisure and Hospitality, Wholesale and Retail Trade, Business Services, Manufacturing, Transportation and Warehousing, Health Services, and Education Services. They contributed $137 billion annually to the U.S. economy, along with $39 billion each year in combined federal, state and local taxes.

By the end of 2025, the Trump administration had revoked parole statuses for individuals admitted through the Cuban-Haitian-Nicaraguan-Venezuelan (CHNV) policy and the southern border using CBPOne. The administration also ended parole for Afghans who entered through the Operation Allies Welcome program. Additionally, the administration fully terminated TPS for six countries: Afghanistan, Cameroon, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

While many paroled individuals and TPS holders accessed other protections, notably asylum, still an estimated half a million individuals in the U.S. had lost status by the end of 2025, impacting an additional 136,000 U.S. citizen adults and 138,000 U.S. citizen children living with them. This includes 301,000 individuals with work authorization, forfeiting their $11 billion in annual economic contributions and $3 billion in annual combined taxes.

As of August 2026, more than 1 million people had already lost status.

These losses were driven in large part by the Trump administration’s cancelation of an additional seven TPS designations—Burma, Ethiopia, Haiti, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. This number will grow if TPS for El Salvador, Lebanon, Sudan, and Ukraine are terminated as expected by the end of the year.

Additionally, the administration has limited re-parole for individuals admitted through the Uniting for Ukraine program, effectively terminating most protections by the end of 2026. Finally, several regulations regarding asylum, including an annual fee to maintain an asylum application, the dismissal of rescheduled master calendar hearings in asylum courts, referrals of nearly half a million affirmative cases to court adjudication, and a historic decline in approval rates will contribute to accelerating status losses by the end of 2026.

Approximately 537,000 U.S. citizen adults and 516,000 U.S. citizen children live with an individual who will be directly impacted. Cumulatively, an estimated 2.2 million individuals in the U.S. are projected to lose status by the end of 2026. This will mean a cumulative 1.2 million workers lost from critical industries, $47 billion in lost annual economic activity, and $13 billion in lost annual taxes.

After years of legal challenges to DACA, we expect that a federal court will soon implement its decision to ban work authorization for DACA recipients in Texas. Severe delays in DACA renewal processing will cause some DACA recipients to lose protections. Losses stemming from asylum rules initiated in 2026 will expand. U and T visa applicants in a multi-year backlog, many of whom will have seen their initial four-year work permit expire, are expected to be unable to obtain a new work permit.

Total losses are projected to reach 2.1 million workers total. This will impact critical industries in the U.S. economy: 10% of the current immigrant workforce in the Construction industry are projected to lose status, while it is 7% in Leisure and Hospitality, and 3% in Manufacturing. Additionally, $79 billion in annual economic contributions will be lost, along with an annual loss of $24 billion in combined federal, state and local taxes.

Three and a half million household members will be impacted, including 984,000 U.S. citizen adults and 1.1 million U.S. citizen children.