A federal appeals court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to end temporary deportation protections for more than 60,000 people from Nicaragua, Honduras and Nepal — at least for now.
A lower court last month blocked the Department of Homeland Security from ending Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for the three countries until at least mid-November to give the court more time to weigh the issue. The judge sided with plaintiffs who argued the Trump administration’s plan to wind down TPS was “motivated by racial animus.”
But on Wednesday, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit put that ruling on hold pending appeal. The order — which was issued by a panel of three judges nominated under the Clinton, Bush and first Trump administrations — did not offer a rationale for the decision.
Tens of thousands of migrants from Nicaragua, Honduras and Nepal rely on TPS, a program that grants temporary reprieve from deportation and work permits to people whose home countries are deemed unsafe due to war or natural disaster.
If they don’t have any other means to stay in the U.S. legally — like a green card or an asylum application — those who lose their TPS are no longer eligible to work in the country lawfully and are at risk of deportation.
Prior to last month’s ruling, the Trump administration sought to end TPS for Nepal on Aug. 5, and for Nicaragua and Honduras in early September.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California — one of the organizations that sued the administration over the TPS decision — called Wednesday’s ruling “devastating.”
“I am heartbroken by the court’s decision,” Sandhya Lama, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement released by the ACLU. “I’ve lived in the U.S. for years, and my kids are U.S. citizens and have never even been to Nepal. This ruling leaves us and thousands of other TPS families in fear and uncertainty.”
DHS called the ruling a “significant legal victory” in a statement.
“Temporary Protected Status was always meant to be just that: Temporary,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said. “TPS was never meant to be a de facto asylum system, yet that is how previous administrations have used it for decades while allowing hundreds of thousands of foreigners into the country without proper vetting.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has sought to wind down TPS for hundreds of thousands of migrants from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti, Venezuela and other countries, arguing their protections have been in place for too long or that conditions in those nations have improved enough to allow their nationals to return.
The Trump administration, for example, has noted that the TPS programs for Honduras and Nicaragua were first created in 1999, after Hurricane Mitch caused catastrophic floods and killed thousands in Central America. The TPS program for Nepal was announced in 2015, after an earthquake hit the small Asian country. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has said all three countries have recovered from those environmental disasters.
But San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson said last month the TPS holders who sued Noem were likely to succeed in arguing that her decisions were “preordained” actions that did not fully consider lingering conditions in Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua.
The judge also referenced a comment made by President Trump during the 2024 campaign in which he said migrants entering the U.S. illegally were “poisoning the blood of our country.”
