Sanchez v. Mayorkas
Case Overview
Sanchez v. Mayorkas (2021) held unanimously that recipients of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) who entered the United States illegally are not eligible to adjust their immigration status to lawful permanent resident from within the United States, because they were never 'admitted' in the technical sense required by the Immigration and Nationality Act. TPS grants work authorization and protection from deportation; it does not cure the unlawful entry that would otherwise bar adjustment of status.
The Facts
Jose Sanchez and Situ Kamu Grullon-Yebra were TPS holders who had entered the United States without inspection. They sought to adjust their status to lawful permanent residence based on approved family visa petitions under 8 U.S.C. § 1255(a), which requires the applicant to have been 'inspected and admitted or paroled.' The government argued that granting TPS did not constitute an 'admission' for adjustment purposes. The Third Circuit agreed with the Sanchez family; the Eleventh Circuit had reached the opposite conclusion. The Supreme Court resolved the split.
The Application
Sanchez and Grullon-Yebra held Temporary Protected Status but had entered the United States without inspection, lacking the lawful admission required by § 1255(a) to adjust status from within the country. Although TPS granted them work authorization and deportation protection during the protected period, the Court found that this statutory designation did not retroactively satisfy the 'admission' requirement, because admission requires actual lawful entry through a port of entry with proper authorization. As a result, their TPS eligibility, while shielding them from removal, could not serve as a bridge to permanent residence adjustment; instead, it left them unable to adjust domestically and forced them to pursue the more difficult path of departing the United States and applying for immigrant visas abroad, a process often triggering bars to re-entry.
The Conclusion
**Unanimous 2021 ruling that significantly affects hundreds of thousands of TPS holders who entered the United States without inspection.** They cannot adjust to permanent residence from within the country, a process known as 'adjustment of status', and instead must leave the country and apply for immigrant visas abroad, often triggering multi-year inadmissibility bars. The decision cut off a primary path to permanent residence for much of the TPS population.
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