A federal judge on Friday cleared the way for the Trump administration to end deportation protections that have allowed hundreds of South Sudanese nationals to live and work in the United States.
U.S. District Judge Patti Saris, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton in Boston, rejected a renewed effort by immigrant-rights advocates to preserve South Sudan’s temporary protected status designation, according to her 15-page order.
The decision came after the Supreme Court in June allowed the administration to end similar protections for people from Haiti and Syria. The high court’s 6-3 conservative-majority ruling curtailed lower courts’ ability to prevent the Department of Homeland Security from terminating TPS designations.
DHS general counsel James Percival celebrated Saris’s decision in posts on X shortly after it was released.
“Judge Patti Saris just lifted her order preventing us from terminating TPS for South Sudan,” Percival wrote. “Every day these ‘administrative stays’ are in effect is a day the American people are denied what they voted for.”
In a second post, Percival shared what he called “today’s TPS update,” listing Haiti, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Nepal, Honduras, Venezuela, and South Sudan as “in effect.”
The chart identified three federal judges whose orders continue to block the administration from ending TPS for Ethiopia, Somalia, and Burma, naming U.S. District Judges Brian Murphy, Allison Burroughs, and Matthew Kennelly, respectively.
Temporary protected status is a program created by Congress in 1990 that allows eligible nationals of countries facing armed conflict, natural disasters, or other extraordinary conditions to remain in the U.S. temporarily and receive work authorization.
DHS moved on Nov. 6 to terminate South Sudan’s TPS designation, saying the country no longer met the statutory conditions for the program. The decision affected more than 232 South Sudanese TPS beneficiaries and at least 73 people with pending applications.
Saris had previously blocked the termination from taking effect. After the Supreme Court ruling, however, lawyers for South Sudanese nationals and the nonprofit African Communities Together returned to court with a new legal argument they said the justices had not addressed.
The challengers argued that the 1990 TPS statute refers to the attorney general — not DHS — as the official with authority to extend or terminate the protections. DHS was created in 2002, when many immigration-related functions were transferred from the Justice Department.
Saris rejected the argument, concluding that Congress had likewise transferred TPS authority to DHS. She wrote that the challengers’ position rested on a “self-contradictory, self-defeating foundation,” because DHS’s supposed inability to terminate TPS also would mean it lacked the power to extend the designation.
FEDERAL JUDGE CONFIRMS DHS CAN TERMINATE TPS FOR HAITI
“South Sudan’s original TPS designation would thus be invalid by the same token as its termination,” Saris wrote.
The ruling allows the administration to proceed with ending the temporary immigration protections for South Sudanese nationals unless a higher court intervenes.