The Trump administration has rescinded deportation protections that the Biden administration had issued for more than 3,600 illegal immigrants from Burma, now called Myanmar, in the United States, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem decided on Monday to reverse her predecessor’s decision to renew temporary protected status, or TPS, for Burmese people who illegally entered the U.S. The program will end on Jan. 26, 2026.
“This decision restores TPS to its original status as temporary,” Noem said in a statement. “The situation in Burma has improved enough that it is safe for Burmese citizens to return home, so we are terminating the Temporary Protected Status. Burma has made notable progress in governance and stability, including the end of its state of emergency, plans for free and fair elections, successful ceasefire agreements, and improved local governance contributing to enhanced public service delivery and national reconciliation.”
As of October, 3,670 people in the U.S. had been approved for TPS as citizens of Burma, according to the National Immigration Forum.
TPS is a designation made every 18 months by the DHS secretary that determines if a country should be exempt from having its citizens returned from the U.S. because the government is not in a position to accept them due to natural disasters, famine, or war.
Burmese citizens were made eligible for TPS in May 2021, early in former President Joe Biden’s term in office.
The designation means that citizens of that particular country who are in the U.S. may apply for TPS, a two-year status that protects the recipient from deportation and gives them a document to work legally in the country for that period.
The DHS recommended that Burmese people who are slated to lose deportation protection use U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s phone app, CBP Home, to self-deport from the country.
Congress created TPS in 1990 to help countries that had been seriously harmed. Countries can request TPS from the U.S. government at any time.
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Trump criticized his predecessors for renewing TPS for various nations and said crises in those countries that began decades ago could not still affect their ability to take back their own citizens.
However, the Trump administration renewed TPS designations for most participating countries in 2019 after it was blocked in court from removing them. In other cases, it continued the years-old program because conditions in those countries had not dramatically improved.