On Wednesday, NC State University officials told 16 Salvadoran staff, largely housekeepers and groundskeepers, not to come to work the next day, when a temporary status that lets immigrants from El Salvador live and hold jobs in the United States was set to expire. An NCSU spokesperson called it a “separation from employment.”
Staff received no information about what would happen after that, said Dante Strobino, an organizer with the North Carolina Public Service Workers Union, UE150.
The next day, the university reversed course and told the workers to return to work on Friday.
Activists say the ordeal was unnecessary. But the confusion stems from the Trump administration’s immigration policy.
Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, grants immigrants from certain countries the right to live and work in the United States. El Salvador’s TPS designation expired Wednesday, and the Trump administration took no action to extend it.
But on Wednesday morning, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that a decision about El Salvador’s TPS “will be made at the appropriate time,” and all those under it would retain work authorization until then.
An NCSU spokesperson told The Assembly on Thursday that the university was attempting to comply with federal law.
“NC State University is subject to federal requirements and follows federal immigration laws, as would be required of any U.S. employer with employees working under Temporary Protected Status,” the spokesperson said. The school rescinded the directive “following the latest federal guidance,” the spokesperson said.
Clermont Ripley, director of the Workers’ Rights Project at the North Carolina Justice Center, said NCSU could have avoided the back-and-forth. For one thing, she said, the government has to publish an official notice if it plans to end TPS for immigrants from a particular country. Lebanese migrants faced a similar situation in May. Two days after their TPS status expired, the White House announced an automatic six-month extension.
“There has been no change in their work authorization,” Ripley said of the Salvadoran staff. “They had it September 8. They had it September 9. They had it today. More steps are necessary for their work authorization to expire.”
Because immigration law is complicated, the White House’s actions put both workers and employers in a difficult situation, Ripley said. But she also called NCSU’s actions “disrespectful.”
“If they knew the date September 9 was coming, they should have given the employees a heads-up,” Ripley said. “I am glad that they have asked everyone back, and I hope that they take steps to make it okay that they fired them for a day. Even if they get to go back to work tomorrow, that creates a significant amount of distress for people who are already in a precarious situation.”
UE150 is calling for back pay for the missed day of work, transparency about the decision-making process, and legal support for workers, among other demands.
“It is unjust that there are thousands of people who have been working for years and could lose their jobs or benefits—people whose immigration status should be regularized,” NCSU housekeeper Monica Castanon said in a UE150 press release.
