In the 25 years since deadly earthquakes shook El Salvador, leading to temporary immigration protection for many natives of the country living in the U.S., Houston has become home to a growing, thriving Salvadoran community.
The metro area’s Salvadoran immigrant population has more than doubled, topping 140,000 residents spread across the region. Most Salvadorans in Houston have put down deep roots in the U.S., with slightly more than half of residents residing in the country for 20-plus years. Salvadorans have become fixtures of the regional workforce, particularly the local construction, hospitality and landscape industries.
But today, the local Salvadoran community faces considerable uncertainty about its future.
For more than a month, federal officials have been considering whether to extend the immigration safeguard, known as Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which allows noncitizens to live in the U.S. without fear of deportation.
TPS technically ended for Salvadorans in early September, but federal officials have said the protection remains in place for now and an announcement on its future “will be made at the appropriate time.” The Trump administration has sought to end TPS for 13 of the 17 counties with the designation — including Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua — since early 2025, often arguing that the status wasn’t meant to extend for decades.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has not published data on the number of Salvadorans with TPS in the Houston area, though a 2019 estimate from the Migration Policy Institute, an immigration think tank, put the figure at about 19,000.
“Right now, we are in a limbo situation,” said Daysi Marin, founder and president of the nonprofit Día del Salvadoreño Houston. “It creates anxiety in the community, because they don’t know if immigration (enforcement) is going to knock on their doors tomorrow. I know a lot of people in the community are really concerned and worried because they’ve bought houses, they own businesses, and they don’t know if they should continue investing or if they have to go back to (El Salvador).”
If the Trump administration ultimately rescinds TPS for Salvadorans, the decision would send ripples throughout the local community, well beyond the relatively small share of residents with immigration protection. For example, some TPS recipients have had U.S.-born children since their arrival.
As Salvadorans await the government’s TPS decision, here’s how the local population has grown and established itself as one of Houston’s most prominent immigrant communities. All data are from the Census Bureau’s decennial census or American Community Survey estimates and represents the Houston metro area, unless otherwise specified.
Salvadoran population grows into second-largest immigrant community
About 66,000 Salvadorans called Greater Houston home at the turn of the millennium, making them the second-largest immigrant community at the time.
In the years since, the local Salvadoran population has steadily grown at a rate slightly outpacing the region as a whole, with the largest gains occurring in the years after the 2001 earthquakes.
About 140,000 Salvadorans lived in the metro area as of 2024, the most recent year with available data, making it the nation’s fourth-largest regional community.
Salvadorans accounted for about 7% of the region’s foreign-born population in 2024, well behind Mexicans and slightly ahead of Hondurans.
Most local Salvadorans call Harris County home
Houston’s Salvadoran population has largely settled in several Harris County communities, with smaller pockets of residents in suburban counties.
Nearly 85% of local Salvadorans lived in Harris County as of the early 2020s, with the largest concentration in the Aldine, Alief, Five Corners, Gulfton, Katy and Spring areas. Smaller communities are found in northeast Houston, southeast Houston and Spring Branch.
About 6% of local Salvadorans reside in Fort Bend County, another 4% live in Montgomery County and 6% call other suburban counties in the metro area home.
Few Salvadorans are new arrivals to U.S.
A large majority of Houston-area Salvadorans are well-established in the U.S., though most aren’t naturalized citizens.
About half of local Salvadorans have lived in the U.S. for two-plus decades, with many arriving in the 1980s to escape civil war and violence in El Salvador. Nearly one-quarter of local Salvadorans have spent 10 to 19 years in the country.
Only 9% of Houston’s Salvadoran population has lived in the U.S. for less than five years. (Federal data doesn’t specify length of residence in the Houston metro area.)
About two-thirds of local Salvadorans are not U.S. citizens, while the remaining one-third has completed the naturalization process. TPS does not provide recipients with a path to lawful permanent residence or citizenship.
Salvadorans help power several local industries
About 84,000 Salvadorans were employed across the Houston area in 2024, spread across dozens of industries.
The largest share of Salvadoran workers, totaling nearly 18,000, worked in the construction industry, more than twice as many as any other sector.
Significant losses of construction workers could exacerbate labor shortages, as local businesses try to keep pace with growing manufacturing and data center demand. A survey of 70 Texas firms conducted by the Associated General Contractors of America and National Center for Construction Education and Research found the vast majority of construction employers are struggling to hire staff, with nearly half citing recent immigration enforcement actions as a direct or indirect factor.
About 8,100 Salvadorans work in local restaurants and food service establishments, another 5,500 service buildings and homes, more than 4,000 work in landscaping and another 4,000 are employed in schools.
“The Salvadoran community is one of the hardest-working communities in the region,” Marin said. “It’s going to create a trickle effect on the (economy) if there’s going to be a loss of employment. It’s going to create some chaos.