A federal judge in Massachusetts has rejected an attempt by immigrant rights organizations to preserve Temporary Protected Status for South Sudanese nationals in the United States, allowing the Trump administration to proceed with terminating those protections. US District Judge Patti Saris issued the ruling on Friday, dismissing arguments brought by groups including African Communities Together, a New York-based organization.
Federal Judge Clears Way for End of Temporary Protected Status for South Sudanese Nationals
A federal judge in Massachusetts has rejected an attempt by immigrant rights organizations to preserve Temporary Protected Status for South Sudanese nationals in the United States, allowing the Trump administration to proceed with terminating those protections. US District Judge Patti Saris issued the ruling on Friday, dismissing arguments brought by groups including African Communities Together, a New York-based organization.
Temporary Protected Status allows eligible nationals of countries experiencing crises such as civil war or environmental disasters to live and work legally in the United States on a temporary basis and shields them from deportation. The Department of Homeland Security moved in November to terminate TPS for South Sudan, asserting that the country no longer met the conditions for the designation, which was first issued in 2011.
The termination would affect more than 232 South Sudanese TPS holders and at least 73 with pending applications. An earlier order by Saris had blocked that termination from taking effect.
Saris's Friday ruling followed a 6-3 Supreme Court decision in June that permitted the Trump administration to strip TPS from hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian nationals, overturning lower court rulings in New York and Washington DC that had blocked the administration from ending protections for more than 350,000 Haitians and approximately 6,100 Syrians.
After the Supreme Court ruling, lawyers for a group of South Sudanese nationals and African Communities Together asked Saris to block the TPS termination on new grounds the justices had not addressed. One argument held that the DHS lacked statutory authority to terminate TPS because the 1990 law that created the program referred only to the attorney general as the official with authority to extend and terminate deportation protections. The DHS was established in 2002, following the September 11 attacks, and received most immigration-related functions previously held by the Justice Department.
In a 15-page ruling, Saris concluded that Congress had also transferred authority over TPS to the DHS. She wrote that the plaintiffs' arguments rested on 'a self-contradictory, self-defeating foundation,' reasoning that if DHS lacked authority to terminate South Sudan's TPS designation, it would equally have lacked authority to issue it in the first place. 'South Sudan's original TPS designation would thus be invalid by the same token as its termination,' she wrote. Saris was appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton.
James Percival, a DHS general counsel, responded to the ruling on X, writing that other TPS-related judges should act similarly and characterizing existing administrative stays as denying the American people what they voted for.
The Guardian contacted African Communities Together for comment but had not received a response at the time of publication.
The immigrant advocacy organization Global Refuge condemned the ruling in a statement on Friday. Its CEO said South Sudan is on the brink of a return to full-scale civil war and that roughly two-thirds of its population, approximately 10 million people, depend on humanitarian aid. The CEO added that with only several hundred South Sudanese holding TPS in the US, the decision reflected a deliberate policy choice rather than a response to scale or systemic strain, and described those affected as vulnerable individuals being returned to a country where civilians face intensifying violence and displacement.
South Sudan has experienced years of civil war and political instability since gaining independence in 2011. More than 400,000 people have reportedly been killed in conflict during that period, with fighting and ethnic violence continuing. The US government has issued its highest-level travel warnings for Americans visiting South Sudan, as well as for Haiti and Syria, countries also affected by TPS terminations.
According to the advocacy organization Fwd.us, TPS holders collectively have paid $7.8 billion annually in taxes and contributed $262 billion to the US economy since 2001. Many work in industries including construction, hospitality, and healthcare. Loss of TPS status can leave individuals without legal standing, making them vulnerable to arrest, detention, and deportation even if they have pending asylum or green card applications.
- African Communities Together had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication, so its reaction to the ruling is not established.
- The source does not specify the precise timeline for when TPS protections will formally end for South Sudanese nationals following this ruling.
- The source does not detail what legal options, if any, remain for affected South Sudanese nationals or the organizations representing them.
- The source does not provide the Trump administration's full rationale for terminating South Sudan's TPS beyond the DHS assertion that the country no longer meets designation conditions.
- The source does not indicate whether any appeal of Saris's ruling is being considered.
Read the original at The Guardian