A federal judge in the United States has cleared the way for the Trump administration to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of South Sudanese nationals living in the country.
US District Judge Patti Saris of the District of Massachusetts on Friday rejected a request from immigrant rights groups, including African Communities Together, to prevent the government from ending the protections.
TPS allows eligible nationals of countries facing severe crises, such as armed conflict or natural disasters, to remain legally in the US temporarily. Beneficiaries are also protected from deportation and permitted to work.
Saris’ ruling comes after the US Supreme Court in June allowed the Trump administration to end TPS protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians. The 6-3 decision overturned lower court rulings that had prevented the administration from terminating the protections.
In her 15-page ruling, Saris rejected the argument that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) lacked the authority to terminate South Sudan’s TPS designation.
She wrote that “as a logical matter, plaintiffs’ arguments rest upon a self-contradictory, self-defeating foundation”.
The judge explained that if DHS lacked the authority to terminate the designation, then it would similarly have lacked the authority to establish it in the first place.
“South Sudan’s original TPS designation would thus be invalid by the same token as its termination,” Saris wrote.
Responding to the decision, DHS general counsel James Percival welcomed the ruling and called on other judges handling similar cases to follow the same approach.
“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 wrote on X.
Immigrant advocacy organisation Global Refuge, however, criticised the ruling. Its chief executive, Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, argued that conditions in South Sudan remained too dangerous for people to be returned.
“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.”
Vignarajah added that the number of South Sudanese nationals covered by TPS was relatively small and argued that ending the protection would expose vulnerable families to worsening violence.
“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,” he said.
The DHS moved in November to end South Sudan’s TPS designation, arguing that the country no longer met the requirements for the protection, which was first granted in 2011.
The decision would affect more than 232 South Sudanese nationals already covered by TPS, as well as at least 73 people with pending applications.
Saris had previously blocked the termination. However, following the Supreme Court’s June ruling, lawyers representing South Sudanese nationals and African Communities Together returned to court with additional arguments.
They argued that DHS did not have the authority to terminate TPS because the 1990 law establishing the programme specifically referred to the attorney general as the official empowered to grant or end the protection.
Saris rejected the argument, finding that Congress transferred the relevant immigration functions to DHS when the department was created in 2002 following the September 11 attacks.
The ruling could leave affected South Sudanese nationals without lawful immigration status, potentially exposing them to arrest, detention and deportation.
South Sudan has experienced years of political instability and armed conflict since gaining independence in 2011, with millions displaced and civilians continuing to face violence.
According to Fwd, TPS holders collectively contribute billions of dollars in taxes and hundreds of billions of dollars to the US economy, with many working in sectors such as construction, hospitality and healthcare.
