By Josse Martinez and Danjha León Martinez
When the United States ended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 57,000 Hondurans in July 2025 (effective September 8), the U.S. government framed it as a routine administrative update. But in humanitarian terms, it was something else entirely: the deliberate withdrawal of a critical protection mechanism in the middle of an ongoing emergency. The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants warned that the decision “withdraws stability, security, and dignity” from families who have depended on TPS for over two decades.
TPS is often discussed as an immigration category, but it functions more accurately as an emergency humanitarian protection tool deployed when a state cannot safeguard the lives of its own citizens. The TPS termination for Honduras nationals therefore does not simply change legal status; it actively produces a new humanitarian crisis. The move comes as Honduras faces extreme violence, institutional fragility, climate-driven displacement, and femicides. Sending tens of thousands back now is dangerous and morally indefensible.
A protection mechanism withdrawn at the worst possible moment
TPS provides temporary legal status and work authorization to people whose home countries face extraordinary and unsafe conditions. The humanitarian purpose is straightforward: people cannot be returned to danger. Yet the United States now argues that “conditions have improved.” Evidence shows the opposite. Honduras continues to be one of the most violent countries in the hemisphere, combining:
- widespread gang control and territorial governance
- an overburdened and under-resourced justice system
- climate-driven food insecurity
- and staggering levels of violence against women and girls
According to the UN Sustainable Development Group, Honduras has long faced another “pandemic” of gender-based violence, registering femicide rates of 6.2 per 100,000 women. Terminating TPS while these conditions persist is a humanitarian miscalculation that potentially places civilians directly in harm’s way.
A humanitarian crisis manufactured by policy
Humanitarian frameworks define crisis as a situation in which civilians cannot survive without external protection. Honduras clearly meets this definition: 1.6 million people require humanitarian aid, the state cannot guarantee basic safety, and threats such as gang violence and femicide operate with near-total impunity. Under international norms, especially the principle of non-refoulement, governments must not return people to countries where their lives or freedom are threatened.
The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants warns that ending TPS will “force people deeper into uncertainty and fear,” including individuals who originally fled death threats, extortion, or gender-based violence. In response to the decision, Honduran TPS holders and national advocacy groups have pushed back. The National TPS Alliance, along with the ACLU and other immigrant-rights organizations, filed a federal complaint challenging the termination of TPS for Honduras. The lawsuit argues that the decision was “arbitrary and capricious,” ignored unmistakable evidence of ongoing danger, and violated the government’s humanitarian obligations. This legal action shows that the crisis caused by ending TPS is so severe that civil society had to mobilize in court simply to protect Hondurans from being returned to life-threatening conditions.
Femicide: The central context of forced return
Femicide is not peripheral to TPS; it is one of the main reasons Hondurans fled. In 2023, Honduras reached a femicide rate of 7.2 per 100,000 women, one of the highest in Latin America. Organizations like Cattrachas document how gender-based killings intersect with policing failures, institutional corruption, and gang control.
Many Honduran women losing TPS originally fled because they were being hunted by abusive partners, traffickers, or armed criminal groups. Ending TPS is therefore not simply deportation. It will force women to return to an environment where they are deliberately targeted and where the state fails to protect them. As the Women’s Refugee Commission notes, gender-based violence is a leading driver of forced migration. Repatriation under these conditions directly increases the risk of femicide.
Community resilience: Art as resistance
Even as institutions fail, communities in Honduras have built their own forms of protection. One of the most powerful is art-activism (“artivism”). Public art challenges the normalization of violence and preserves memory in ways formal systems often fail to do. The UN Spotlight Initiative has supported art-based gender-violence prevention in 17 Honduran municipalities, using murals, sculptures, and theater to create community dialogue and challenge harmful norms.
The feminist graffiti duo Dolls Clan (Mayki Graff Ortega and Suam Fonseca) creates public murals honoring victims of femicide and amplifying feminist resistance. Their work turns public walls into spaces of collective mourning and political demand. Public art is a form of humanitarian response: it educates, resists, and keeps victims’ stories alive when formal justice systems fail. But art cannot replace systemic protection.
The immediate human cost of ending TPS
Ending TPS triggers four immediate humanitarian harms:
- Family separation: Thousands of U.S.-born children have Honduran parents with TPS. Families now face the devastating choice between separation or relocating to a country many children have never known.
- Economic instability and re-poverty: TPS holders have spent decades building careers, homes, and businesses in the U.S. Forced return pushes them into an already unstable Honduran economy.
- A rise in irregular migration: History shows that ending legal pathways does not reduce migration; it increases undocumented migration as people seek safety through more dangerous routes.
- Exposure to direct violence: Returnees become immediate targets of gangs, extortion networks, police corruption, and gender-based violence. TPS termination does not fix migration. It makes it deadlier.
A crisis created by political choice
Ending TPS for Honduras is not a neutral administrative action, it is a political decision with profound humanitarian consequences. It forces thousands back into a country facing intersecting emergencies: femicide, gang rule, climate disaster, and institutional collapse. While communities fight to maintain dignity and memory, the U.S. is withdrawing one of the only forms of international protection Hondurans have left. It abandons a protection promise the United States upheld for more than two decades. If the United States seeks to honor its humanitarian commitments, it must extend TPS or redesign it as a pathway to long-term stability, not dismantle it. Protection should never depend on political cycles. Lives depend on it.
Josse Martinez is a Global Governance, Politics, and Security (GGPS) graduate student at American University. He is of Honduran and Guatemalan descent.
Danjha Leon Martinez is a Research Assistant for the Immigration Lab at the Center for Latin American & Latino Studies. She is a Development Management graduate student at American University with a focus on humanitarian aid and global migration
AULA Blog 