Waste and recycling workers are among those affected by recent Temporary Protected Status immigration program terminations, creating instability for both employees and employers.
Companies like Waste Pro have responded by hiring additional employees to fill gaps left by workers who suddenly lose the legal ability to work in the U.S. The company is also doing more cross-training and has been consulting with legal experts on next steps.
“It's impacting lots of business segments, but it’s definitely impacting the solid waste segment, particularly in the Southeast,” said Bill Jones, division vice president in Southwest Florida.
TPS, a program established by the U.S. government in 1990, offered temporary lawful immigration status and enabled work authorization to migrants who were unable to return to their original countries due to hardships like war or natural disasters. But a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June paved the way to end TPS for thousands of workers, including those from Haiti and Syria. The ruling also affects pending decisions for other countries like Yemen, South Sudan and Myanmar.
More changes to TPS were announced this week. TPS designation for Ethiopia was terminated on Tuesday, and those under TPS for Somalia had their designation terminated effective Aug. 14. The status for several other countries is still in legal limbo.
About 1.3 million people with TPS were living in the United States as of 2025. Since then, the Trump administration has terminated or announced its plan to terminate TPS for over 1 million people, according to the American Immigration Council.
Though it’s unclear what number of those individuals hold waste industry jobs, data from the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model says a significant number of workers under TPS hold transportation, “material moving” and maintenance-related roles. Construction accounts for the highest percentage of employees with TPS designation, according to Penn Wharton.
The move to end TPS has drawn criticism from labor groups such as the AFL-CIO, which called the decision “a devastating blow to working families and the stability of our economy.” AFSCME, which represents some waste workers, has also historically supported the TPS program and other immigration programs like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
Ripple effects for employers and workers
Waste Pro operates across 12 states in the U.S. and has more than 5,700 employees. Jones estimates about 33 or more of its workers have so far been affected by TPS terminations in the past month or so, but that number is “a moving target” as more countries are added to the termination list.
Though TPS changes have affected a small portion of Waste Pro’s workforce so far, it’s created notable ripple effects, Jones said. Workers in administrative, driver, helper, technician, laborer, mechanic and equipment operation roles have all been affected.
“We focus on hiring the most capable and positive people, and we don't want to let them go,” he said. “We've invested in them, and we want to continue to invest in their future because that's investing in our communities as well.”
Waste Pro has been focusing on boosting its hiring in recent months, he said. “For Southwest Florida in particular, the majority of the employees impacted by this are in the helper and driver category. So we've been working to hire up and cross-train folks on routes so that there are no service disruptions to our customers,” he said.
Waste Pro has had to terminate employment for numerous workers who lost the legal ability to work under TPS. Yet Jones said the company has been keeping some of those workers’ jobs open in case they can come back on a different work employment authorization, such as through gaining U.S. citizenship or achieving a different asylum status.
Because the TPS program has been challenged in court for some time, Jones notes that Waste Pro and other companies have also had time to plan their approach in case their employees one day lost legal work status.
The waste industry as a whole has been monitoring TPS and other immigration developments for several years, noting that policy uncertainties can have big impacts on an industry whose workforce includes a notable proportion of immigrants. In past years, groups such as the National Waste and Recycling Association have called for “sensible immigration reform that allows businesses to address their employment needs.”
Stacked effects from TPS, CDL changes
But TPS isn’t the only workforce policy change that has affected the industry in recent months, Jones said.
A new rule from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which took effect in March, restricts certain “non-domiciled” drivers from being able to hold or renew a commercial drivers license, including certain asylum seekers and refugees who were previously eligible. FMCSA said the rule change was needed to “close gaps” in how states issue the licenses, alleging there was a “troubling series of fatal crashes caused by nondomiciled CDL holders.”
Waste Pro, along with AFSCME, Teamsters and others, were among the groups that spoke out against the change, saying FMCSA’s justification didn’t match up with their day-to-day operations or how drivers are trained. An emergency motion filed to block the rule was not sucessful.
Waste Pro at the time said the rule could affect up to 20% of its drivers in Southwest Florida, thus delaying service and making it hard to replace qualified drivers because of the time-intensive training process.
Jones said at least eight of Waste Pro’s drivers in the South Florida region have so far had their CDLs revoked under the new regulations, including drivers who had previously won national driver awards, he said. In most cases, they found different positions for those workers within the company.
“I had one driver in particular who's been in Southwest Florida for over 20 years. He has a house, put his kids through school here, pays his taxes, and his license was revoked simply because of where he was born, which is just crazy,” he said.
Jones said Waste Pro is complying with state and federal employment laws, and the process can be an emotional roller coaster for some of its employees when laws change. A few months ago, when one employee got a letter informing him that his Temporary Protected Status had expired, that worker had to leave his job because he was no longer legally cleared to work in the country.
About a week later, that worker returned to his job at Waste Pro after key asylum paperwork cleared, allowing him to work legally again.
“We’re excited for him, excited for his family, and glad he has the asylum process going,” Jones said. “But that has not been the case for everybody.”
One source of uncertainty is whether the federal government will expand its labor restrictions to other rules that affect immigrant workers, he said. That could shrink the pool of available workers to hire, and it could create future consistency problems for scheduling worker shifts and the roles they’d be eligible to fill, Jones said.
The labor market in the Southeast has been strong in recent years, in part because of a growing population and good weather that allows for year-round work, he added. But to keep employees, companies must also invest in their employees through both training and compassion, he said.
“We want to be people-focused,” he said. “We always want to leave that door open for anybody that's in a situation where their employment might be in jeopardy because of new rules and regulations and laws.”
