Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of South Sudanese nationals residing in the United States is set to end after US District Judge Patti Saris of Massachusetts ruled in favor of the Trump administration's effort to strip these protections.

On Friday, August 7th, 2026, Judge Saris rejected a challenge brought by immigrant rights organizations, including the New York-based African Communities Together, which sought to preserve TPS for South Sudanese nationals living in the US.

This decision follows a 6-3 Supreme Court ruling in June 2026 that allowed the Trump administration to terminate TPS for over 350,000 Haitians and approximately 6,100 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 these groups.

TPS grants eligible individuals from countries experiencing crises such as civil war or environmental disasters the right to live and work legally in the US temporarily, while protecting them from deportation.

In her 15-page ruling, 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, a DHS general counsel, tweeted: “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 legal grounds not addressed by the justices. One argument contended that the 1990 statute establishing TPS only granted authority to the attorney general to extend or terminate protections, not the DHS.

Sources