Temporary protected status (TPS) for hundreds of South Sudanese nationals in the United States is set to end after a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration can move forward with stripping their protections.
On Friday, US district judge Patti Saris of the district of Massachusetts rejected an attempt by immigrant rights organizations including the New York-based African Communities Together to keep TPS for South Sudanese nationals living in the US.
Saris’s decision follows a 6-3 supreme court ruling in June allowing the Trump administration to strip hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians of TPS, which granted them permission to work and live legally in the US.
The supreme court’s conservative majority overturned lower court rulings in New York and Washington DC, which had blocked the administration from ending TPS for more than 350,000 Haitians and about 6,100 Syrians.
A TPS designation allows eligible people from certain countries facing crises including civil war and environmental disasters to remain in the US temporarily, protects them from deportation and allows them to work legally.
In her 15-page ruling, Saris wrote that “as a logical matter, plaintiffs’ arguments rest upon a self-contradictory, self-defeating foundation”.
According to Saris, the plaintiffs’ argument undermined itself, because if the homeland security department (DHS) lacked the authority to terminate South Sudan’s TPS designation, it also would have lacked the authority to issue the designation initially.
“South Sudan’s original TPS designation would thus be invalid by the same token as its termination,” Saris wrote.
In response to the ruling, James Percival, a DHS general counsel said on X: “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.”
The Guardian has contacted African Communities Together for comment.
The Trump administration’s effort to strip TPS protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants comes despite the US government’s own highest-level travel warnings for Americans to several countries affected, including South Sudan, Haiti and Syria.
In the case of South Sudan, the country has been ravaged by years of civil war and political instability that have displaced millions. Since gaining independence in 2011, more than 400,000 people have been killed in conflict, with fighting and ethnic violence continuing to claim civilian lives.
The DHS moved in November to terminate TPS for South Sudan, saying the country no longer met the conditions for the designation, which was first issued in 2011. The department’s action would have led to the end of protections for more than 232 South Sudanese and at least 73 South Sudanese with pending applications. An earlier order by Saris had blocked that from happening.
After the supreme court’s ruling, lawyers for a group of South Sudanese nationals and the non-profit African Communities Together urged Saris to once again block the end of TPS on new grounds that the justices had not addressed.
That included an argument that the DHS lacked authority to terminate TPS because the statute that created the TPS program in 1990 referred only to the attorney general as the official who had authority to extend and terminate the deportation protections.
The DHS was established later, in 2002, after the September 11 attacks.
Most of the justice department’s immigration-related functions were transferred to it at that time. Saris, who was appointed by Bill Clinton, concluded Congress had likewise transferred authority over TPS to the DHS.
Since 2001, TPS holders have paid $7.8bn annually in taxes and contributed $262bn to the US economy, according to the advocacy organization Fwd.us. Many TPS holders are employed in critical industries already facing worker shortages across the country, including construction, hospitality and healthcare.
Losing TPS can leave immigrants without legal status vulnerable to arrest, detention, and deportation, even with pending asylum or green card applications.
Some may face immigration court proceedings with limited options to stay in the US. Those ordered removed could be deported and barred from returning for years.
Reuters contributed reporting