Temporary protected status (TPS) for hundreds of South Sudanese nationals residing in the United States is set to end after a federal judge ruled in favor of the Trump administration's effort to strip these protections.

On Friday, August 7th, 2026, US District Judge Patti Saris of Massachusetts rejected a legal attempt by immigrant rights groups, including African Communities Together, to preserve TPS for South Sudanese nationals living in the US. This decision follows a June Supreme Court ruling that allowed the Trump administration to terminate TPS for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority overturned previous lower court rulings in New York and Washington DC that had blocked the administration from ending TPS for over 350,000 Haitians and about 6,100 Syrians. TPS permits eligible individuals from countries experiencing crises such as civil war or environmental disasters to live and work legally in the US temporarily while protecting them from deportation.

In her 15-page ruling, Judge Saris stated that the plaintiffs' arguments were "self-contradictory" and "self-defeating," noting that if the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) lacked authority to terminate South Sudan's TPS designation, it would also have lacked authority to issue it initially.

Following the ruling, James Percival, DHS general counsel, posted on X urging other TPS judges to follow suit, stating, "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."

After the Supreme Court decision, lawyers representing South Sudanese nationals and African Communities Together urged Judge Saris to block the TPS termination on new grounds, arguing that the 1990 statute creating the TPS program assigned authority over TPS extensions and terminations solely to the attorney general, not DHS. However, this argument was not accepted in the ruling.

Sources