I-485 With TPS: How TPS Holders Adjust Status After Sanchez v. Mayorkas

Last updated July 29, 2026 · Reading time: about 11 minutes

Temporary Protected Status lets you remain and work lawfully, but on its own it does not make you admitted for purposes of adjusting status. That is the holding of Sanchez v. Mayorkas, and for TPS holders in Pennsylvania it confirmed what the Third Circuit had already decided — a lawful entry, not TPS itself, is what opens the door to a green card from inside the country.

There is still a path, and it is narrower and more time-sensitive than it used to be. This guide covers what Sanchez actually decided, why the answer in Pennsylvania did not change, how travel on advance parole can supply the admission that TPS does not, the fee and timing problems that come with it, where TPS stands as of July 2026, whether an admission survives if a TPS designation ends, and how the tightened discretionary standard affects these filings.

What Sanchez v. Mayorkas Actually Held

In Sanchez v. Mayorkas, 593 U.S. 409 (2021), a unanimous Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Kagan, held:

"A TPS recipient who entered the United States unlawfully is not eligible under § 1255 for LPR status merely by dint of his TPS."

The reasoning turns on a distinction the Court described this way: "Lawful status and admission, as the court below recognized, are distinct concepts in immigration law: Establishing one does not necessarily establish the other."

The TPS statute, 8 U.S.C. § 1254a(f)(4), says a TPS holder "shall be considered as being in, and maintaining, lawful status as a nonimmigrant." That fixes your status. But INA 245(a) independently requires that you were "inspected and admitted or paroled" — an admission. TPS supplies the first and not the second. As the Court put it, the statute "does not constructively 'admit' a TPS recipient."

Why Nothing Changed in Pennsylvania in 2021

Before Sanchez, the circuits were split. The Sixth Circuit (Flores v. USCIS) and the Ninth and Eighth Circuits said TPS counted as an admission. The Third, Fifth, and Eleventh said it did not.

Pennsylvania sits in the Third Circuit. And the Third Circuit's own decision — Sanchez v. Secretary U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 967 F.3d 242 (3d Cir. 2020) — was the decision the Supreme Court affirmed. Eastern Pennsylvania was governed by the no-admission rule from July 2020 forward, a full year before it went national.

This matters because clients constantly hear otherwise from friends and relatives in Ohio, Michigan, or California. If someone tells you "my cousin got her green card through TPS," she either was in the Sixth or Ninth Circuit before June 2021, or — far more likely — she traveled first. Which brings us to the actual path.

The Travel Route: How an I-512T Creates an Admission

This is the workaround, and it is entirely legitimate. USCIS built it deliberately.

On July 1, 2022, USCIS issued Policy Alert PA-2022-16 and rescinded Matter of Z-R-Z-C-, the 2020 decision that had blocked this route. The current USCIS Policy Manual, at 7 USCIS-PM B.2(A)(5), now states:

"TPS beneficiaries whom DHS has inspected and admitted into TPS after such authorized travel are 'inspected and admitted' for purposes of adjustment of status under INA 245(a). This is true even if the TPS beneficiary was present without admission or parole when initially granted TPS."

The mechanics: you apply on Form I-131 for permission to travel. USCIS issues Form I-512T, "Authorization for Travel by a Noncitizen to the United States" — a document created specifically for TPS holders in 2022, replacing the old I-512L advance parole document for this purpose. You travel abroad. You present the I-512T at a port of entry, and CBP admits you into TPS. That admission is the thing INA 245(a) requires.

Authorized TPS travel is also not a "departure" for purposes of the three- and ten-year unlawful presence bars, so the trip does not trigger them.

The critical exception. The Policy Manual is explicit that "travel with TPS authorization does not execute an outstanding removal order." If you have a final order of removal, traveling does not erase it — and returning can expose you under INA 212(a)(9)(A)(ii) and 212(a)(6)(B). Anyone with any prior order needs that resolved, usually through a motion to reopen, before booking a flight. This is not a detail to sort out later.

One more wrinkle: if you traveled on advance parole between August 20, 2020 and July 1, 2022, your situation falls in a gray bracket where the Policy Manual and USCIS's own policy alert point in somewhat different directions. Do not assume either answer without having the file reviewed.

TPS · Adjustment of status · Estatus de Protección Temporal

TPS keeps you here. By itself it does not
open the green card door.

In Pennsylvania it is a lawful admission — not TPS itself — that makes adjustment of status possible. For many TPS holders, travel on advance parole can supply one, but the sequencing, the fees, and the risk analysis all have to be right before anyone leaves the country. Free 30-minute consultation in English or Spanish.

En Pensilvania es una entrada legal, no el TPS en sí, lo que permite el ajuste de estatus. Para muchas personas con TPS, viajar con permiso adelantado puede proporcionarla, pero la secuencia, los costos y el análisis de riesgo deben estar bien antes de salir del país. Consulta gratuita de 30 minutos.

Assess My TPS Options →

Or call (484) 763-4984

The Fee and the Timing Problem

The I-131 fee for a TPS travel authorization is $630. There is no separate charge for the I-512T itself, and there is no fee waiver for this purpose. The old rule that gave free travel documents to people with pending I-485s survives only for cases filed between July 30, 2007 and March 31, 2024.

Processing has been running in the range of eight to fifteen months. Read that number against the next section, because in 2026 it is frequently longer than the remaining life of a client's TPS designation. That timing gap is the single biggest practical problem with this strategy right now, and it is the reason this cannot wait.

Where TPS Stands as of July 27, 2026

This is the fastest-moving area in immigration law, and any list is a snapshot. Verify your own country's status before acting.

The controlling event of 2026 was Mullin v. Doe, decided June 25, 2026 by a 6–3 Supreme Court. The Court held that 8 U.S.C. § 1254a(b)(5)(A) bars all non-constitutional challenges to TPS designations, terminations, and extensions, reading "determination" broadly enough to cover the whole chain of agency decisionmaking. In plain terms: the Administrative Procedure Act theory that won nearly every TPS case in 2025 is no longer available. Only constitutional theories — equal protection, due process, nondelegation — survive, and lawyers have been amending complaints accordingly.

Broad picture as of late July 2026:

• Terminated and in effect: Venezuela (both designations), Honduras, Nicaragua, Nepal, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Syria, Yemen.
• Terminated but currently blocked by court order: Somalia, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Burma/Myanmar — several of these on stays measured in days or weeks, not months.
• Haiti: terminated, with court-ordered protection that expires at the end of July 27, 2026. This one requires a same-day check.
• Still valid: El Salvador (expires September 9, 2026), Ukraine and Sudan (expire October 19, 2026), Lebanon (extended through November 27, 2026).

Venezuelans, read this carefully. A carve-out from a May 2025 district court order remains in place and has never been stayed: Venezuelans who received TPS documentation on or before February 5, 2025 bearing a "Card Expires" date of October 2, 2026 retain status and work authorization through that date. That covers roughly 200,000 people. It is also under direct threat — the government filed a petition in July 2026 asking the Supreme Court to send the underlying Ninth Circuit decision back for reconsideration in light of Mullin.

El Salvador. The statutory 60-day deadline for DHS to announce a decision passed on July 11, 2026 with no announcement. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1254a(b)(3)(C), a missed deadline triggers an automatic six-month extension, and DHS has used exactly that mechanism for other countries. But nothing confirming it for El Salvador has been published. If you hold Salvadoran TPS, treat September 9, 2026 as your date until DHS says otherwise.

Several countries appear on both the terminated-TPS list and the travel-ban proclamations — Haiti, Venezuela, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burma, Afghanistan. One piece of genuinely good news there: on June 5, 2026, a federal court in Rhode Island vacated the USCIS policies (PM-602-0192, PM-602-0194, and PA-2025-26) that had put benefit applications from those nationals on hold and made nationality a "significant negative factor." USCIS announced compliance on June 12, 2026, and said the policies "should be treated as if they are not in effect." The vacatur is agency-wide, though USCIS has appealed. We covered the related litigation in our post on the Dorcas ruling.

If TPS Ends, Does the Admission Survive?

This is the question every client asks second, and it deserves a straight answer including the uncertainty.

No USCIS guidance, no regulation, and no court decision addresses it squarely. Here is the analysis:

INA 245(a) asks a historical question — were you inspected and admitted. The Policy Manual's own phrasing is consistent: the beneficiary "was inspected and admitted into TPS," and that fact makes them admitted for adjustment purposes. Nothing conditions it on the underlying status continuing.

INA 245(c)(2) asks a present-tense question — are you in unlawful status on the date of filing, and did you fail to maintain lawful status since entry. And the statute expressly exempts "an immediate relative as defined in section 1151(b)" from that bar.

So the answer splits on category, not on the admission itself:

• Spouse, parent, or unmarried child under 21 of a U.S. citizen: you are exempt from 245(c)(2) by the text of the statute. Losing TPS should not defeat the I-485, because the only provision that cared about ongoing status does not apply to you. The admission is banked.
• Preference category (F2A, F3, F4, or employment-based): losing TPS means falling out of lawful status, and 245(c)(2) bites at filing. An employment-based applicant may still reach INA 245(k), and practitioners have noted that a TPS traveler admitted this way is present pursuant to a lawful admission for 245(k) purposes. Family preference applicants have a harder problem.

The separate and serious risk is not eligibility. It is that losing TPS means losing work authorization and gaining exposure to removal while the I-485 sits pending. A pending application is not a status.

The honest bottom line: the better reading is that the admission is a completed historical fact that survives the end of TPS, and for an immediate relative of a U.S. citizen there is no continuing-status requirement to fail. But USCIS has not said this in writing and no court has decided it. Anyone in this position should have counsel before TPS lapses, not after.

The Discretion Problem in 2026

Even with eligibility established, USCIS changed the rules of the game on May 21, 2026 with policy memorandum PM-602-0199, which directs officers to treat adjustment of status as "an extraordinary discretionary relief to the regular immigrant visa process and an act of administrative grace." The memo's key sentence:

"The absence of adverse factors, by itself, does not demonstrate such unusual or outstanding equities."

It also directs officers to weigh whether the original entry complied with the law and whether conduct after entry was consistent with the purpose of the admission. A TPS holder who originally entered without inspection and later used an I-512T to create an admission is, candidly, exactly the profile this memo describes.

That does not make the case unwinnable. It makes it a case that must be built — years of tax returns, employment history, U.S. citizen children, community ties, medical circumstances, letters, clean record — and filed with the discretionary argument written into it rather than saved for the interview. A separate August 2025 policy update also made social media content and "anti-American" expression an explicitly weighted negative discretionary factor across benefit requests, which is worth a conversation before filing.

What This Costs in 2026

TPS itself became dramatically more expensive under the July 2025 reconciliation law. The TPS registration fee went from a statutory cap of $50 to a base of $500, now $510 after the January 1, 2026 inflation adjustment, plus a $30 biometrics fee. A TPS work permit is $560 initially and $280 to renew. These are statutory and cannot be waived.

The adjustment package itself: I-485 is $1,440 for an applicant 14 or older, I-130 is $675 on paper, the work permit filed with a pending I-485 is $260, and the I-131 is $630. No H.R. 1 fee attaches to an I-485 filed with USCIS — the new $1,540 adjustment fee applies only to an I-485 filed with the immigration court, where the all-in cost is now roughly $2,980.

Remember that USCIS has accepted only electronic payment for paper filings since October 28, 2025, with one payment authorization per form.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I get a green card through TPS alone?

No. Sanchez v. Mayorkas holds that a TPS grant is not an admission for adjustment of status purposes if you entered the country unlawfully. TPS gives you status; INA 245(a) separately requires an admission or parole.

What is Form I-512T and how do I get one?

It is the TPS travel authorization document USCIS created in July 2022. You apply on Form I-131 with a $630 fee. If approved and you travel and return, CBP admits you into TPS, and that admission satisfies INA 245(a). Processing has been running roughly eight to fifteen months.

I have an old deportation order. Can I travel on an I-512T?

Do not travel without a lawyer. USCIS states plainly that travel with TPS authorization does not execute an outstanding removal order, and leaving and returning can create new inadmissibility problems. A motion to reopen usually has to come first.

My TPS country was terminated. Is my pending I-485 dead?

Not automatically. If you are the immediate relative of a U.S. citizen and you were admitted on a TPS travel authorization before the termination, the strongest reading is that the admission survives, because the statute exempts immediate relatives from the continuing-status bar. This has not been confirmed by USCIS or any court, so get counsel involved before your status lapses.

Does time on TPS count against me as unlawful presence?

No. Because 8 U.S.C. § 1254a(f)(4) deems a TPS holder to be in and maintaining lawful nonimmigrant status, unlawful presence does not accrue during a valid TPS period. Unlawful presence you accrued before the TPS grant is not erased.

Talk With a Lehigh Valley Immigration Attorney

The TPS-to-green-card path is real, but in 2026 it is a race against two clocks at once: your country's designation and USCIS processing times. If you hold TPS and you have a U.S. citizen spouse, parent, or adult child, the window to start is now, not when the termination notice arrives.

We handle TPS, adjustment of status, and family petitions for clients throughout Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton, and the Lehigh Valley, in English and Spanish. Schedule your free consultation and bring your TPS approval notices, your I-94, and any travel documents you have. If you want background reading first, see our guides to the marriage-based green card process in Allentown, traveling with a pending green card application, and what TPS and asylum work permit holders in the Lehigh Valley should know.

This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice, nor does it create an attorney-client relationship. TPS designations, court orders, and USCIS policies described here were current as of July 27, 2026 and have been changing week to week; several of the court orders discussed expire within days of publication. For advice about your specific situation, consult a licensed immigration attorney.