Boston Judge Allows Trump Administration to End South Sudan TPS Protections

The seal of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is seen in Arlington, Texas, U.S. August 26, 2025 (Photo Credit: REUTERS/Shelby Tauber)

A ruling in Boston could reshape the future of temporary immigration protections as similar cases move through courts across the United States.

On August 7, 2026, a federal judge in Boston allowed the administration of President Donald Trump to end temporary deportation protections (TPS) that had previously allowed hundreds of South Sudanese citizens to temporarily live and work in the United States.

Judge Patti Saris in Boston rejected the latest attempt by immigration advocates to preserve TPS for South Sudan after the Supreme Court in June allowed the administration to end similar protections for citizens of Haiti and Syria.

The Supreme Court’s decision, backed by its conservative 6–3 majority, limited lower courts’ ability to review actions by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to terminate TPS for nationals of roughly a dozen countries.

TPS provides people from countries that have experienced natural disasters, armed conflicts, or other extraordinary events with temporary protection from deportation and authorization to work.

In November, DHS formally decided to terminate TPS for conflict-ridden South Sudan, saying that the country no longer met the requirements for the program, which was introduced in 2011.

The decision would strip protection from more than 232 South Sudanese citizens and at least 73 people with pending TPS applications. An order previously issued by Saris had blocked the move.

Legal challenge on new grounds

After the Supreme Court’s decision, attorneys representing a group of South Sudanese citizens and the nonprofit organization African Communities Together asked Saris to again block the termination of TPS on new grounds that courts had not yet considered.

Among their arguments, they claimed that DHS lacked the authority to terminate TPS because the 1990 law that created the TPS program granted the power to extend and terminate deportation protections only to the attorney general; DHS was established later, in 2002, following the events of September 11, 2001. Saris concluded that Congress had transferred TPS authority to DHS.

She also noted that the arguments against this conclusion were self-defeating, because if DHS lacked the authority to terminate TPS for South Sudan, it would never have had the authority to extend it either.

The initial designation of TPS for South Sudan would therefore be invalid under the same logic as its termination

– Patti Saris

James Percival, DHS’s general counsel, urged other judges handling similar TPS cases to follow Saris’s position and lift restrictions on terminating protections for people from other countries.

Every day these administrative stays remain in effect, the American people are being deprived of what they voted for

– James Percival, DHS General Counsel

Representatives for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The case highlights how statutory authority and U.S. immigration policy intersect in real-world litigation and how court decisions can affect the fate of TPS for more than a dozen countries.

Source: https://mezha.net/eng/bukvy/17225ade_boston_judge_allows/