BOSTON — US District Judge Patti Saris of the District of Massachusetts ruled that the Trump administration can proceed with terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for South Sudanese nationals. The decision rejects legal challenges to the policy and allows the Department of Homeland Security to move forward with ending protections for this specific group.

The rulings affect approximately 232 South Sudanese nationals with TPS and at least 73 with pending applications. This determination follows a November move by the Department of Homeland Security to terminate TPS for South Sudan, stating the country no longer met the conditions for the designation.

Judge Saris addressed the core legal argument presented by the plaintiffs in her written opinion. She stated in her ruling that "as a logical matter, plaintiffs’ arguments rest upon a self-contradictory, self-defeating foundation." The judge further wrote that "South Sudan’s original TPS designation would thus be invalid by the same token as its termination." Her conclusion rested on the finding that Congress had transferred authority over TPS to the DHS when the department was established in 2002.

The plaintiffs had argued that the DHS lacked authority to terminate TPS because the statute creating the program in 1990 referred only to the attorney general as the official with authority to extend and terminate deportation protections. South Sudan was first issued TPS designation in 2011.

TPS designation allows eligible people from countries facing crises such as civil war and environmental disasters to remain in the US temporarily, protects them from deportation, and allows them to work legally. Since 2001, TPS holders have paid $7.8bn annually in taxes and contributed $262bn to the US economy, according to the advocacy organization Fwd.us.

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, CEO of Global Refuge, criticized the decision in an official statement. "The reality of the situation is that South Sudan is on the brink of a return to an all-out-civil war. Roughly two-thirds of the population, some 10 million people, now depend on humanitarian aid to survive. With only several hundred South Sudanese holding TPS in the US right now, this isn’t a policy forced by scale or strain on our system. To the contrary, this is the administration’s deliberate choice to send a small group of vulnerable individuals and families back into a country where civilians are bearing the brunt of intensifying violence and displacement, Vignarajah said."

More than 400,000 people have been killed in conflict in South Sudan since it gained independence in 2011. James Percival, DHS General Counsel, responded to the ruling on his social account. Every other TPS judge must do the same! Every day these ‘administrative stays’ are in effect is a day the American people are denied what they voted for," Percival said. He added that the new rulings leave only TPS terminations for Ethiopian and Somalian nationals, which are still blocked by courts."

In a separate but related development, US District Judge Matthew Kennelly in Chicago rejected an effort to maintain TPS designations for Myanmar. The termination of TPS for Myanmar would affect roughly 4,000 people. These lower court decisions follow a broader shift in judicial oversight of the program.

The Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling in June allowing the Trump administration to strip TPS protections from Haitians and Syrians. That Supreme Court ruling overturned lower court rulings in New York and Washington DC that had blocked the administration from ending TPS for more than 350,000 Haitians and about 6,100 Syrians.

Why It Matters

These rulings extend a judicial shift permitting the termination of Temporary Protected Status, following a Supreme Court decision that already cleared the way for removing protections from Haitians and Syrians. The decisions immediately expose over 4,000 nationals from South Sudan and Myanmar to potential deportation back to regions facing active conflict and humanitarian crises. With only Ethiopian and Somalian cases currently blocked, the legal pathway for ending these designations has widened significantly.