By Staff Reporter
BUFFALO — The deadline for Ukrainians living in the United States under Temporary Protected Status came and went Monday. Their protection didn’t end, and it wasn’t renewed either. The Department of Homeland Security said only that an announcement “will be made at the appropriate time.”
On the same day, President Donald Trump said it was “time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine,” and said he would be willing to meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping next month, possibly without Ukraine’s president at the table.
For the Ukrainian families who have resettled in Western New York since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the two pieces of news landed together: a war their relatives are still living through, and a legal status here that now depends on a federal notice no one has seen.
A deadline that passed without a decision
Ukraine’s TPS designation was set to run through Oct. 19, 2026, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The agency’s page, updated Monday, now carries an alert: “An announcement on Ukraine’s TPS will be made at the appropriate time. Until such announcement is made, Ukrainian individuals present in the U.S. under TPS retain protection including work authorization.”
The administration said the protection covers about 101,000 Ukrainians, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, along with about 1,800 people from Sudan whose status was also due to lapse. DHS gave no length for the protection. The Inquirer noted the administration did the same thing in September for about 170,000 Salvadorans and has made no further announcement since.
Federal law requires the homeland security secretary to decide whether to extend or end a TPS designation at least 60 days before it expires. If no decision is made, the designation is automatically extended for six months. For Ukraine, that deadline was Aug. 20, and no Federal Register notice was published. Some immigration lawyers argue the protection now runs through April 19, 2027, the law firm Greenspoon Marder wrote Oct. 14. But it advised employers to be careful, because USCIS “has not yet issued corresponding guidance regarding employment authorization.”
That gap matters at the hiring desk. Until DHS publishes guidance, a Ukrainian worker’s card may show an expiration date that has already passed, and an employer has only the government’s web alert to go on.
“These are our neighbors, employees, parents, and children,” Andre Krug, chief executive of the Philadelphia social services agency KleinLife, said as the deadline neared, according to the Inquirer. “Now they are being left to wonder whether they will be allowed to work, support their families, or remain safely in the United States.”
‘Somebody else’
Mr. Trump made his remarks to reporters Monday, hours after a Russian drone hit a public park in the Kharkiv region, killing six civilians, including two children, the Kyiv Post reported.
Asked about a possible summit with Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi in China, the president said, “I would do it, not so much for Ukraine, because Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine. They haven’t been doing much.” He said such a meeting would focus on “nuclear weapons and denuclearization.”
He also defended his decisions to ease restrictions on Russian diesel exports and to waive new sanctions against Moscow, which President Volodymyr Zelensky has criticized. “Zelensky doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Mr. Trump said. “To be honest, I think it’s time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine.”
Mr. Zelensky called the Kharkiv strike a “pure atrocity.” “We ask that sanctions on Russia stay in place as long as the killings continue. We ask America to be strong,” he said, according to the Kyiv Post.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Putin wants talks with Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen on Nov. 18 and 19, according to the Kyiv Post. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, rejected the idea in a statement on X.
“A trilateral meeting between the leaders of Russia, China, and the US would do only the opposite: encourage Putin to continue this war,” Mr. Sybiha wrote. “He is not a global leader; he is a war criminal.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the idea of a three-way meeting “has indeed been mentioned,” but that there was no formal proposal or agenda.
The Western New York stake
Buffalo’s Ukrainian community is long established, with Ukrainian Catholic parishes and the Dnipro Ukrainian Cultural Center on Genesee Street, and it has been taking in newcomers since 2022. The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America’s Buffalo branch runs a Ukrainian Welcome Center on Military Road for recent arrivals, offering help with housing, food, language classes and schooling. It refers families to Journey’s End Refugee Services, Catholic Charities, the International Institute of Buffalo, Jewish Family Services and the City of Buffalo’s Office of New Americans.
The city marked its support early. By April 2022, weeks after the invasion, a sign outside City Hall designated the route as “Ukraine Freedom Square.”
Not every Ukrainian newcomer in the region has TPS. Many came through the federal Uniting for Ukraine parole program, which has its own renewal process. TPS covers Ukrainians who have lived here continuously since Aug. 16, 2023, however they arrived, according to USCIS. It does not lead to permanent residency or citizenship.
The administration has argued that temporary status should mean temporary. It has moved to end TPS for more than 1 million people from other countries since early 2025, including about 330,000 Haitians, according to the Inquirer, citing the American Immigration Council.
What to watch
Three questions are open. Will DHS publish a Federal Register notice, and will it extend Ukraine’s designation, end it, or confirm the automatic six-month extension? Will USCIS issue guidance that employers can rely on for work permits? And will Western New York’s congressional delegation press DHS for an answer before employers start asking workers for papers they can’t produce?
The Buffalo Chronicle has asked UCCA Buffalo how many families it is working with who rely on TPS, and will update this story with its response.
Featured photo: The “Ukraine Freedom Square” sign outside Buffalo City Hall, April 2022. Andre Carrotflower / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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