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Following the recent trend, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) terminated the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for Honduras.  TPS will terminate for qualifying citizens of Honduras on January 5, 2020.  Hondurans currently in TPS status may continue working in the United States through January 5, 2020, if they re-register.

Current beneficiaries of Honduras’s TPS designation seeking to extend their TPS must re-register by August 6, 2018.  Hondurans who do so will receive an automatic extension of their current Employment Authorization Document (EAD) through January 1, 2019.  To qualify for this automatic extension, the Honduran national must have an EAD that expires on July 5, 2018 and contain the category code A-12 or C-19 on the EAD.  The automatic extension also covers Honduran nationals who have an EAD that expired on January 5, 2018, and who are still waiting for new EADs they applied for during the last re-registration period.  These employees should eventually receive a new EAD with a January 5, 2020 expiration date.

The government has provided the directions on how to complete the Form I-9 for Honduran nationals with the automatic extension of their EAD.

When using an automatically extended EAD to complete Form I-9 for a new hire before January 2, 2019, the employer should do the following:

  1. Determine if the EAD is auto-extended by ensuring it is in category A-12 or C-19 and has a July 5, 2018 expiration date (or January 5, 2018 expiration date provided the employee applied for a new EAD during the last re-registration period but has not yet received a new EAD);
  2. Write January 1, 2019, as the expiration date.

In the case of a current employee taking advantage of the automatic extension of his or her EAD, the employee and employer should do the following:

  1. Employee – draw a line through the expiration date in Section 1; write January 1, 2019, above the previous date; and initial and date the correction in the margin of Section 1.
  2. Employer
    1. Determine if the EAD is auto-extended by ensuring it is in category A-12 or C-19 and has a marked expiration date of July 5, 2018, or January 5, 2018, provided the employee applied for a new EAD during the last re-registration period but has not yet received a new EAD.
    2. Draw a line through the expiration date written in Section 2;
    3. Write January 1, 2019, above the previous date; and
    4. Initial and date the correction in the Additional Information field in Section 2.

Before the start of work on January 2, 2019, employers must re-verify the employee’s employment authorization in Section 3 of Form I-9.