Begging for Scraps as TPS Gets Taken Away

On a family drive to the beach in Long Island a few months ago, my mom turned to me from the front seat and said, “Your grandpa was diagnosed with a terminal illness.” Her voice was sad yet calm, slightly detached. She went on, “If he gets treatment, he’ll live at most 10 years.” 

She was talking about her father. She and I both had a complicated relationship with him. He drank heavily when my mom was younger, and picked it up again until his diagnosis. When he’d drink he was cruel. When I was asked to talk to him on a call, I’d briefly say hi, tell him about my day, and leave. 

I had felt hurt by his behavior, but hearing of his diagnosis softened that. I couldn’t feel angry anymore. I remembered that he was my grandpa, who took me out for sushi and brought sweets every time he visited. Hearing that his days were officially numbered reminded me that I love him.

“Oh, wow,” I said quietly, and none of us spoke in the car for a while. There wasn’t really anything to add. We can’t go see him, and we don’t know if we ever will. He lives in Ukraine, and my parents, little sister, and I cannot leave this country, because we are in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

Humanitarian Parolees

My family moved to the United States from Ukraine four years ago, fleeing the Russian invasion. We first lived here under a different program, Uniting for Ukraine (U4U), set up specifically in response to the invasion. We were classified as “humanitarian parolees” (HPs). The differences are slight: A humanitarian parole is a way to get in, while TPS is what grants you a stay. You don’t get work authorization immediately as a HP, but you do with TPS. Being humanitarian parolees required us to have a financial sponsor, which fortunately we did. 

About a year after we arrived, we were granted our first stay of 18 months under TPS.  

Temporary Protected Status is granted to people who’ve come here from other countries escaping war, a natural disaster like an earthquake, an epidemic, or “other extraordinary and temporary conditions.” TPS does not lead to a path to citizenship; that’s the “temporary” part, but at least we could stay here while bombs are dropping at home.

Recipients of TPS cannot be deported as long as they have the status and can legally work here.

When we first arrived, the U.S. (and much of the rest of the world) was standing with Ukraine, sending money and arms, and accepting Ukrainians as war refugees. Much has changed in the last year and a half.

In March of 2025, around 1.3 million people from 17 countries had TPS protections, including about 100,000 Ukrainians. One by one, those countries were removed from TPS. Though most Ukrainians are White, like me, the vast majority of people who the Trump administration is stripping of TPS are people of color. TPS for Haitians was revoked in July of this year, leaving only four countries that still had TPS protections, and those are all scheduled to end soon. El Salvador’s TPS status expires in September. Sudan and Ukraine’s is set to expire in October, Lebanon’s in November, and then that’s it. All those people, including my family, could be deported to dangerous conditions.

Hoping for Someone Kind and Logical

When we first received TPS, we knew we’d have to reapply every 18 months. In March 2026, I was working on my computer science homework when my mom called me into the kitchen. 

“You have to write a Supporting Letter. Basically your own account of the war.” It was the first time my mom had asked me to help with our TPS application.

I described how, as a 12-year-old, I’d rehearsed packing because of rumors of war. I described the day my city was invaded: the sound of bombs flying, then hitting buildings. My dad and I rushed the suitcases, packed for real this time, out to the car and got in a long line for gas, while my mom and grandmother took care of my baby sister. Then the five of us went on a long journey through Europe and landed in the U.S. four months later. 

You don’t know who is going to read your TPS application letter, so you just hope it is someone kind and logical.

My mom encouraged me to clinically outline the trauma of the war. I tried to do that, and also recounted things I’ve read over the past four years in the Ukrainian news and social media from freed prisoners of war. They described Russians starving, beating, and raping civilians as well as soldiers.  

I felt like I was begging for scraps, degrading myself to show that I am “weak” enough to be allowed to stay. 

When writing this letter, you don’t know who is going to read it, so you just hope it is someone kind and logical. We turned it in in March, and we are supposed to hear back soon. 

This year, I am more invested in the process. I’m old enough to be told more, I guess, but is 17 really the age at which you should be worrying about this stuff? I don’t really have a choice.

Under TPS I can’t leave the country and come back, so I can’t visit my dying grandfather. I also can’t join my New York classmates on our school trip to Japan. There is more anxiety as I enter my last year of high school and start applying for college. The Common App asks for citizenship status. Mine is “U.S. resident with other status,” which encompasses DACA, DED, and TPS recipients.

Every year or so, we apply for a Green Card, a Permanent Resident Card that allows you to live and work permanently in the United States. It’s a separate process from TPS and it’s very hard to get approved.

Ugly History Returns

This summer I took a course about immigration, homelessness, and refugeedom with 12 other high schoolers. Some of the teens in the class were first-generation immigrants who moved here young; others were second-generation immigrants. I was the only one who was not a citizen.

We read “We Refugees,” a 1943 essay by Hannah Arendt, a Jewish historian and philosopher who fled Nazi Germany. It describes what a refugee endures: not just a lack of a place to sleep, but the “familiarity of daily life.” Having to speak a different language goes beyond just awkwardness or shame from inexperience; it’s a loss of “naturalness of reactions, the simplicity of gestures, the unaffected expression of feelings.” This text made me feel seen like no conversation about my experience ever has.

One day we talked about racism against the Irish in the 1840s, when the Great Famine of Ireland caused mass emigration to the U.S.. We looked at political cartoons that depicted the Irish as brutes and apes. and then how the portrayal shifted to acceptance after the Civil War, during Reconstruction. Once slavery was ended, nativist panic switched targets toward freed Black citizens and away from White immigrants. My teacher said of the Irish in the Reconstruction-era U.S., “They weren’t perfect, but at least they were ‘White’ enough.” 

All the things we discussed in class, whether they happened over a century or two weeks ago, remind me of the situation today, including the racism animating so many anti-immigration policies. Once again, it’s largely people of color who are not “real Americans.” I have Hispanic friends who won’t fly now, even though they are citizens. 

You’d think that after centuries of racial stereotyping and discrimination against people in grave danger or seeking a better life, people who later became the foundation of the land of immigrants, the U.S. would know better than to do it again. But this country seems to be heading in the opposite direction. For example, even though the 14th Amendment clearly states that people born here are citizens, this summer, in the Trump v. Barbara case, the Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship by only a 6-3 decision. 

Where Would We Go?

Learning all this history feels a little surreal, as I’m also living in it, waiting to hear if our TPS status will be renewed or if TPS will even continue. There is a lot on my mother’s plate. She has to assemble all the TPS documents every 18 months; she has a father who may be dying whom she can’t visit; she has two children. My parents make decent salaries, but we are still looking for an apartment that doesn’t have mold, cockroaches, or mice. 

Sometimes the pressure leaks out of my mom into conversations with me. Recently, I was trying to make a plan with a friend for a couple weeks later and asked her if I could go. 

Her response was exasperated. “We ought to survive this day first, and then we can see about later.” This was not the first time she said something like that and it frustrated me. Yes, life is unpredictable, but I just wanted to make one definite plan a few weeks in advance. 

She continued, in more of a mumble to herself, “You know, we didn’t think the war was going to happen.” I knew what she meant, because sometimes I feel the same thing, that anything can happen to you at any time, so what’s the point in making a plan? 

If TPS for Ukrainians does indeed end in October and we get deported, I do not know where we will go.