Construction worker, gardener, waiter, painter, realtor — these are the jobs Mardoel Hernandez has held as a Honduran immigrant living in the U.S. for over 20 years. Hernandez, a teacher who fled his home country in the 1990s, was granted legal status and a work permit under the Temporary Protection Status program. 

The program, created by Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, allows immigrants to temporarily remain in the U.S. if they’re from countries designated as unsafe. TPS allows migrants to apply for work permits and shields them from deportation, but does not offer a pathway to citizenship. 

Now, Hernandez is joining other TPS holders across the country in a hunger strike to pressure Mr. Biden to extend protected status for immigrants at risk for deportation, since President-elect Donald Trump has promised to revoke the program upon taking office. 

“We are asking President Biden to leave a strong legacy among the immigrant community and honor his word,” Hernandez told CBS News. “He promised us so much.”

As part of the hunger strike organized by the National TPS Alliance organization, immigrants say until Mr. Biden responds, they will abstain from food in sympathy with the deprivation experienced in their home countries. 

“In 2017, I began packing my bags when Trump canceled TPS for Hondurans.” Hernandez said. “My only option now is to rally and hope that Biden will notice and act.” 

During an interview in October with NewsNation, Trump was asked about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, and whether he’d revoke TPS. 

“Absolutely, I’d revoke it, and I’d bring them back to their country,” he responded. This followed debunked claims from Trump on the campaign trail that Haitian immigrants living in Springfield were killing and eating pets of local residents. 

“President Trump will enlist every federal power and coordinate with state authorities to institute the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers in American history while simultaneously lowering costs for families,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump transition spokeswoman, told CBS News in a statement, when asked what Trump plans to do with TPS holders and whether these immigrants would be part of his overall deportation plans. 

“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail, like deporting migrant criminals and restoring our economic greatness. He will deliver.” Leavitt said. But she did not address what the Trump administration plans to do with migrants who have temporary legal U.S. status.

According to the latest data, there are over 850,000 TPS holders, as of March 2024. Around 350,000 Venezuelans, 200,000 Haitians and 180,000 Salvadorans make up the largest group of beneficiaries. 

Approximately 300,000 TPS holders reside in Florida, while Texas has nearly 95,000, and New York and California each have around 68,000. 

TPS holders are provided renewable relief for up to six, 12 or 18 months, but without an extension, many will begin losing their legal status in 2025. Protections for Salvadorans are set to expire first in March, with Venezuela, Ukraine and Sudan in April, and Nicraragua in July. 

“It is very important that anybody who is under Temporary Protection Status sits down with an attorney to evaluate every possible avenue to obtain a permanent status, or to change status, and figure it out,” said Haim Vasquez, an immigration lawyer in Dallas, Texas. “If there’s anything that can be done, they must do it sooner than later.”

Since Trump won the election, Vasquez says he has been taking questions at the Salvadoran consulate in Dallas from TPS holders who will be among the first to see their status expire in March. 

Extensions, known as designations, for TPS are announced two months before the expiration date, Vasquez said. In this case, Biden would have to issue a new designation for Salvadorans by Jan. 9. 

As for how much time immigrants would have in the country before they face deportation if Trump were to fulfill his promises and revoke TPS, Vasquez says it depends on how Trump terminates the program. He could allow the status to run through expiration dates previously set; any revocation is sure to be met with lawsuits.

“A hundred percent, we expect that there will be legal challenges,” Vasquez said. 

During his first administration, Trump tried to terminate TPS for beneficiaries from six countries, including Haiti, Honduras, El Salvador, Nepal, Nicaragua and Sudan. Trump’s attempts, however, were immediately met with legal challenges, and a judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the TPS terminations. 

With critical deadlines looming, on Dec. 9, a group of senators sent a letter to Mr. Biden urging him to protect long-settled immigrants before Trump’s inauguration with key action steps. 

Sens. Dick Durbin, Cory Booker, Catherine Cortez Masto, Tammy Duckworth, Mazie Hirono, Ben Ray Luján and Alex Padilla asked the president to redesignate and extend TPS for all eligible countries. The senators stressed that “worsening crises across the world,” including in Ukraine and Nicaragua, underscore the need for continuing the protected status. 

Currently, the U.S. has conferred the status on nationals of El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti, Nepa, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Venezuela, Burma, Cameroon, Ethiopia and Ukraine. 

Soledad Miranda, a Salvadoran TPS holder, also joined the hunger strike in Washington, D.C., urging Mr. Biden to issue an extension before he leaves office. She fears deportation and being separated from her U.S.-born daughter. 

“Biden is leaving the White House, and we want him to do what he didn’t do in four years.”

Outgoing NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Wednesday he is optimistic SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s relationship with President-Elect Donald Trump will help ensure NASA receives the funding needed to support a robust agenda, including returning U.S. astronauts to the moon.

Trump has nominated billionaire Jared Isaacman, veteran of two SpaceX Crew Dragon flights to low-Earth orbit, to serve as NASA’s next administrator, prompting speculation Musk’s connections to both men might give him even more influence over NASA space policy than he currently wields.

“On the one hand, I am optimistic because of the relationship that Musk has with Trump that NASA will get the funding that it needs because Musk will be advocating,” Nelson said in an interview with CBS News. “On the other hand, if Musk were to want to cut out other companies in the competition for rockets, that would not be a good thing. And I think Musk is smarter than that.”

SpaceX already delivers cargo to the International Space Station with its unpiloted Dragon capsules and ferries astronauts to and from the outpost aboard its Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Critical to the Artemis moon program, SpaceX also is building a variant of its Starship rocket to carry astronauts back to the lunar surface in 2027. It will be NASA’s first such landing since the final Apollo mission in 1972.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ company, Blue Origin, also is building a moon lander for NASA, giving the agency alternatives in case one company’s spacecraft is grounded for some reason.

But in the near term, SpaceX is “the horse that we’re going to ride, and we’re expecting that horse to be able to run and run fast,” Nelson said. “And if not, we’ve got another horse and it’s called Blue Origin.”

At Nelson insistence shortly after taking office, NASA held a second competition for a second lunar lander “based on the principle that you want to have two spacecraft in case something happens to one of them,” Nelson said.

“If ever there’s been a demonstration of the wisdom of having two competitors, it was for the cargo and crew to the space station.”

NASA hired SpaceX and Boeing to build commercial crew ferry ships in the wake of the space shuttle’s retirement in 2011.

While SpaceX has successfully launched 10 sets of astronauts and cosmonauts to the station aboard Crew Dragon capsules, along with five purely commercial flights to orbit, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has carried just two crew members to the lab.

Commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams took off on Boeing’s first piloted Starliner test flight June 5. The mission was expected to last eight to 10 days, but thruster problems and propellant leaks combined to extend the crew’s stay aboard the ISS while engineers carried out extensive testing.

In the end, NASA decided to bring the Starliner down without its crew, switching Wilmore and Williams to a Crew Dragon and delaying their return to Earth until mid February. On Tuesday, NASA announced launch of the next Crew Dragon, carrying a replacement ISS crew, is slipping to at least the end of March.

That means Wilmore and Williams will log an additional month and a half in orbit before finally coming home after 10 months in space. Asked if he had any words of encouragement for the Starliner astronauts, Nelson said simply “they are true professionals, as are all of our astronauts, and they meet whatever is the need of NASA.”

Future of NASA’s Artemis moon program

The Isaacman nomination has prompted speculation in some quarters that NASA’s Artemis moon program, relying on the agency’s costly Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule, could face major changes, including a possible switch from the SLS to SpaceX’s gargantuan Super Heavy-Starship rocket.

Nelson said a different rocket might be used in the 2030s, but the SLS is the only choice available for moon flights through the end of the current decade.

“Understand, that there is currently one human-rated rocket that has been to the moon and back, and that is SLS,” Nelson said.

NASA launched the first SLS on the program’s maiden flight in 2021, sending an unpiloted Orion capsule on a looping flight around the moon and back. The second SLS is being prepared for launch in the April 2026 timeframe to send four astronauts on a similar out-and-back-again trip around the moon.

After that, the Artemis 3 mission is tentatively targeted for launch in 2027. In that flight, an SLS will boost astronauts to the moon in an Orion capsule that will dock with SpaceX’s lander in lunar orbit. From there, two astronauts will descend to touchdown near the moon’s south pole where ice deposits may await discovery.

“Right now, when you add up all of that, you’re talking about a number of years down the road, you’re talking about Artemis 3 landing in mid ’27 and then the others to follow,” Nelson said. “This is fiscal year ’25, we’re talking at least into fiscal year 3031.

“So by that time, is there going to be another rocket that’s going to supersede (SLS)? I do not know the answer to that. But I know that the SLS and the Artemis program are certainly going to be there for the near future.”