Trump Administration Clears Final Court Hurdle to End TPS Protections for Roughly 1 Million Migrants

Key Facts

Published: August 18, 2026 Location: Washington D.C. Source: The Washington Times, Reuters, U.S. Supreme Court

• All Trump administration TPS terminations are now in effect after a federal judge lifted the final injunction involving Ethiopian migrants.
• Roughly one million migrants could ultimately lose deportation protections, according to The Washington Times.
• Supreme Court rulings have substantially strengthened DHS authority to terminate country-specific TPS designations and limited lower courts' ability to block those decisions.

Federal judge’s Ethiopia ruling puts all Trump administration TPS terminations into effect following major Supreme Court victories

by Emmitt Barry, Worthy News Washington D.C. Bureau Chief

WASHINGTON (Worthy News) – The Trump administration has cleared the final judicial obstacle blocking its campaign to terminate Temporary Protected Status for migrants from a series of countries, potentially ending deportation protections for roughly one million people, according to The Washington Times.

The latest breakthrough came Tuesday when U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston lifted an injunction preventing the Department of Homeland Security from terminating Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for more than 5,000 Ethiopian nationals.

The ruling followed a series of court victories for the administration and means that every TPS termination pursued by the Trump administration for individual countries is now in effect.

“Those with terminated TPS should leave NOW. If they don’t, we will DEPORT them,” the Department of Homeland Security said following the ruling, according to The Washington Times.

What Is Temporary Protected Status?

Congress created TPS to allow nationals from countries experiencing war, natural disasters, or other extraordinary conditions to remain temporarily in the United States when returning home is considered unsafe.

The designation also generally allows eligible migrants to obtain authorization to work in the United States.

However, TPS was designed as a temporary humanitarian status, with designations generally granted for periods of no more than 18 months at a time and subject to review by the Department of Homeland Security.

President Donald Trump has long argued that successive administrations transformed temporary protections into what amounted to long-term residency for hundreds of thousands of migrants.

His administration has consequently moved to terminate TPS designations for numerous countries, arguing that conditions that originally justified the protections no longer warrant allowing recipients to remain indefinitely.

The Washington Times estimates that the administration’s actions affect roughly one million migrants who previously held protections from deportation.

Supreme Court Paved the Way

The administration’s effort faced repeated challenges in federal courts, but a major turning point came in June when the Supreme Court allowed the government to terminate TPS protections affecting migrants from Haiti and Syria.

The Court’s conservative majority concluded that federal immigration law sharply limits judicial review of decisions by the Homeland Security secretary to terminate TPS designations.

That ruling has since reverberated through lower courts.

On August 7, federal judges cleared the administration to end TPS protections for migrants from South Sudan and Myanmar, and on August 14 another federal judge permitted DHS to terminate protections for nearly 1,100 Somali nationals.

Tuesday’s Ethiopian ruling removed what remained of the nationwide judicial roadblocks to the administration’s country-by-country TPS termination program.

The ruling does not mean the TPS program itself has been abolished. Rather, it allows the Trump administration’s existing decisions terminating TPS for designated countries to take effect while some constitutional litigation may continue.

For Trump, however, the decisions represent a significant victory in a broader effort to restore presidential and executive-branch authority over immigration enforcement while dramatically expanding removals of migrants who no longer have legal protection from deportation.

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