The Trump administration has terminated Temporary Protected Status for nationals of Somalia, South Sudan, Cameroon, and Ethiopia, deepening a rollback of the humanitarian immigration programme that has been underway since 2025.
- What TPS Actually Does
- Why Cameroon and Ethiopia Are on the List Too
- The Full List of Terminated TPS Countries
- The Supreme Court Ruling That Changed Everything
- Does This Mean Automatic Deportation?
- What Happens to Work Permits
- Sudan Is Next, and the Clock Is Already Running
- What Affected Nationals Should Do Now
According to alerts posted on the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website, Somalia’s designation ended on August 14, 2026, while South Sudan’s ended a week earlier, on August 7, 2026. Both decisions trace back to determinations made by then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who concluded that the two countries no longer met the statutory conditions required to keep the protection in place.
“After reviewing country conditions and consulting with the appropriate U.S. government agencies, former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem determined that Somalia no longer met the conditions for its designation for Temporary Protected Status,” USCIS said in its alert.
For thousands of Somali and South Sudanese nationals who have built lives, jobs, and families in the US under TPS, the announcement lands as one more deadline in a programme that has been shrinking for over a year.
What TPS Actually Does
Temporary Protected Status isn’t a green card and was never meant to be one. It’s a stopgap: a status Congress created in 1990 that lets nationals of countries hit by war, natural disaster, or other extraordinary conditions stay in the US legally, work, and avoid deportation while things back home are too dangerous for return. Beneficiaries can apply for work permits and, in some cases, travel authorization. But TPS expires with the designation, and it was never designed to lead anywhere permanent.
That distinction matters now more than ever, because the Trump administration has spent the past year and a half systematically ending TPS designations one country at a time.
Why Cameroon and Ethiopia Are on the List Too
Cameroon and Ethiopia’s terminations aren’t new news exactly, but they’re part of the same list USCIS is now circulating, and their timelines tell two very different stories.
Cameroon’s TPS ended back on August 4, 2025, after DHS announced the termination in April that year alongside Afghanistan’s. Roughly 17,000 people across both countries lost eligibility to work legally in the US when those two designations lapsed.
Ethiopia is more complicated. DHS announced on December 12, 2025 that it would end TPS for Ethiopian nationals, with a termination date of February 13, 2026, a decision that would have affected around 5,000 people. But on January 30, 2026, a federal judge in the District of Massachusetts stepped in and stayed the termination while litigation played out. That stay is still holding as of this writing, which means Ethiopian TPS holders remain protected for now, even though their designation is technically marked for termination on paper.
The Full List of Terminated TPS Countries
USCIS has now ended TPS designations for the following countries:
- Haiti
- Syria
- Yemen
- Afghanistan
- Cameroon
- Nepal
- Honduras
- Nicaragua
- Venezuela
- South Sudan
- Myanmar (Burma)
- Somalia
A handful of designations remain active but are running on borrowed time. El Salvador’s TPS is set to expire September 9, 2026. Sudan and Ukraine are both scheduled for October 19, 2026. Venezuela’s 2023 designation runs to October 2, and Lebanon’s to November 27. None of these five had a termination notice on file as of mid-August 2026, but given the pattern of the last eighteen months, few expect that to last.
The Supreme Court Ruling That Changed Everything
Much of what’s happened since late June traces back to one case: Mullin v. Doe, decided by the US Supreme Court on June 25, 2026. The ruling went in the government’s favour on the underlying question of how quickly TPS terminations can take legal effect, and it cleared the runway for a wave of designations that had been stuck in litigation.
Within weeks of that decision, five TPS designations that courts had been holding in limbo went ahead and terminated: Yemen on July 20, Haiti and Syria on July 27, and Burma and South Sudan both on August 7. Somalia followed on August 14.
Two designations are still standing only because of court orders that predate the Supreme Court’s decision, Somalia (until its own August termination) and Ethiopia. Everyone tracking this closely expects the Ethiopia stay to eventually face the same pressure the South Sudan stay did, given that the underlying legal argument protecting it just lost at the Supreme Court level.
Does This Mean Automatic Deportation?
Not necessarily, and USCIS has been careful to say so. Losing TPS doesn’t automatically put someone on a plane out of the country. If a person has another lawful immigration status, a pending asylum claim, a family-based petition, a different visa category, that status doesn’t disappear just because TPS did. USCIS has directed affected nationals to its “Explore My Options” page to check what alternatives might apply to their situation.
That said, the practical reality is blunter. Anyone whose TPS ends and who has no other legal status on file loses their work authorization and their protection from removal. Immigration attorneys have been urging TPS holders for months to consult a lawyer well before their designation’s termination date, not after.
What Happens to Work Permits
Employment Authorization Documents tied to TPS, the ones with category codes A-12 or C-19, expire when the underlying designation ends, unless a court order says otherwise. For South Sudan, USCIS had been extending EAD validity dates repeatedly through the SAVE system while litigation was ongoing, most recently pushing the expiration to August 10, 2026, just before the designation’s final termination on August 7 overtook the extension entirely.
Employers using E-Verify or processing Form I-9 for employees from terminated countries need to check the relevant USCIS country page directly, since the guidance has been updated on what feels like a rolling basis throughout 2026.
Sudan Is Next, and the Clock Is Already Running
Sudan deserves its own mention because its TPS designation is still active, for now. USCIS confirmed on August 14, 2026 that Sudan’s TPS and related benefits are set to terminate on October 19, 2026. Recipients who haven’t yet received renewal EADs but remain otherwise eligible are having their existing documents extended through that date.
Given how the last twelve months have gone, Sudanese TPS holders would be wise not to assume October 19 will pass quietly.
What Affected Nationals Should Do Now
For Somali, South Sudanese, Cameroonian, and Ethiopian nationals trying to figure out where they stand, a few things are worth doing immediately:
- Check USCIS’s country-specific TPS page directly, since alerts get updated without much advance warning.
- Talk to an immigration attorney about whether any other status, asylum, family petition, employment-based options might apply.
- Keep every TPS-related document (approval notices, EADs, I-797 forms) on hand, since these can matter for future applications even after a designation ends.
- Watch the Ethiopia litigation closely, since its outcome will likely signal how the remaining stayed and pending terminations get resolved.
TPS has always been temporary by design. What’s changed over the past eighteen months is how quickly that word is being taken literally, and how little room is left for the countries still hoping to avoid the same fate as Somalia, South Sudan, and Cameroon.
