In pursuing his mass deportation campaign, President Trump has sought to expand the pool of immigrants it can remove from the country by terminating humanitarian programs that have allowed people to temporarily live and work legally in the United States. The most contested is known as Temporary Protected Status, or T.P.S.
The latest volley at the decades-old program came late Friday, when in a brief, unsigned order, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the government to lift the form of protection for Venezuelan immigrants, ultimately leaving some 600,000 people at risk of deportation by November.
The T.P.S. program allows foreign nationals to stay in the U.S. for about 18 months when circumstances such as natural disasters or armed conflict make returning to their home countries unsafe. But the initiative has become all but permanent for people from some nations that have continued to be unstable for many years, such as Haiti and until recently, Syria.
Critics of the program such as Mr. Trump say that has made it ripe for exploitation. But immigrant and refugee advocates say that this form of immigration relief has become one of the few paths to safety for people in an outdated and overburdened immigration system that Congress has failed to adapt to the modern challenges of global migration.
Now, a wave of litigation from coast to coast has plunged hundreds of thousands of people — as well as their employers and families — into uncertainty over whether they can maintain the work permits and deportation protections under the program and for how long. Some have already been fired, held in detention or deported. Others are worried they will be abruptly expelled and forced to return to the dangerous homelands they had fled.
Which Countries Have T.P.S. Right Now?
This year, the Trump administration has taken steps to eliminate the program for more than one million people from eight nations: Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Syria and Venezuela. But immigrant and civil rights groups have filed six lawsuits across the country in attempts to stave off most of those actions. Plaintiffs from Haiti have won relief in the courts and remain protected for now. The Supreme Court emergency decision immediately ended the protections for 350,000 Venezuelans who arrived in 2023, leaving them at risk of deportation. The program will expire for an additional 250,000 Venezuelans who arrived in 2021 on Nov. 7.
For nine other countries, including El Salvador and Ukraine, the Trump administration has left T.P.S. in place. But those protections are scheduled to begin expiring as early as next month.
For now, judges have preserved extensions of the program granted under the Biden administration for Haitians. That encompasses about 330,000 people who will have the protections until February 2026.
In two other cases, federal appeals courts have allowed federal officials to terminate the program for some 80,000 people, mostly from Honduras.
Syrians became the latest group facing the loss of protections in September. That same month President Ahmed al-Shara of Syria appeared before the United Nations General Assembly to paint a new picture of his country after an offensive he led last year toppled the dictator Bashar al-Assad and ended a 13-year civil war. The T.P.S. program will expire for 4,000 people at the end of November, after which they can be deported.
Even favorable rulings for Haitians and Venezuelans would leave their status, along with that of hundreds of thousands of others, unsettled: The National TPS Alliance and the Haitian Evangelical Clergy Association, two advocacy organizations that have filed suits, are continuing their litigation to preserve the protections for both groups. The National TPS Alliance is also preparing to contest the termination of T.P.S. for people from Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal in November. And the U.S. government has indicated it plans to issue a new directive on Haitian protections by December.
Why does the Trump administration want to end the program?
Mr. Trump has long targeted T.P.S. The form of legal protection, passed with bipartisan support by Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush in 1990, was created to aid people experiencing humanitarian emergencies.
During Mr. Trump’s first term, his administration tried to end T.P.S. for more than 400,000 people, saying that conditions in some countries had improved and that the initiatives did not align with its efforts to tighten the nation’s borders. But the attempts to end the program were successfully challenged in court by the National TPS Alliance and other organizations.
President Biden later went on to expand T.P.S. protections and create new temporary humanitarian programs as his administration struggled to process record levels of migrants arriving at the southern border.
Since returning to office, Mr. Trump has tried to dismantle those Biden-era initiatives, claiming migrants who have entered through the programs are abusing the protections and have not been properly vetted. Now, as in Mr. Trump’s first term, immigrant and civil rights groups are challenging the administration’s actions, arguing that federal officials have violated administrative procedures and acted with racial bias in revoking the program.
In March, Judge Edward M. Chen of the Federal District Court in San Francisco prevented the administration from ending T.P.S. for Venezuelans and Haitians while their legal challenge moved forward. Mr. Chen cited discriminatory statements made by Mr. Trump and his homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, against Venezuelans as evidence that racial animus could have been a factor. He also said termination of the program for hundreds of thousands of people would inflict irreparable harm on families, cost U.S. businesses and industries billions in economic activity and hurt the health and safety of communities.
But in May, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to temporarily pause the program. Throughout the summer, the fate of Venezuelans and Haitians was in flux, until Judge Chen issued a final ruling in September to restore the protections. The Ninth Circuit upheld that decision, after which point the government asked the Supreme Court to weigh in.
What has been the impact?
The back-and-forth in the courts has created a fraught environment for T.P.S. holders. Many have been applying for asylum, work visas or other forms of legal relief. But the pathways to legal residency are slim, and petitions can take years to process.
After days of stress and deliberation, Rita, a labor delivery nurse in Texas whose T.P.S. expired in August, decided to return to her native Nepal. But she had to cancel her flight hours before her departure as violent political protests erupted in Kathmandu, the capital, shutting down international airports. Dozens were killed, and government offices and Parliament buildings were left scorched.
Rita, a plaintiff in the National TPS Alliance who asked that her last name be withheld for security reasons in Nepal, said she is now waiting to receive work authorization in Canada and trying not to feel “trapped.” “There has been no stable day,” she said.
Jhony Silva, another plaintiff in the case who was born in Honduras and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, said he had been protected under the T.P.S. program since he was 3 years old, when he and his mother fled the devastation of Hurricane Mitch. His parents have since been able to acquire legal residency through his sibling, but he has been stuck in legal limbo.
He has lost his position as a nursing assistant at Stanford University and is relying on community support to get by. But he said he cannot leave his 9-year-old child, nor the United States, the only country he has ever really known.
“I am kind of hoping that something gives — something positive,” he said.
Jazmine Ulloa is a national reporter covering immigration for The Times.
Allison McCann is a reporter and graphics editor at The Times who covers immigration.
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