The American Immigration Council is a non-profit, non-partisan organization. On June 25, the Supreme Court delivered a decision which struck like a lightning bolt, burning the hopes of hundreds of thousands of people with Temporary Protected Status who were anticipating that the Court might let their lawsuit against the Trump administration move forward. Instead, the Court threw out their lawsuits almost entirely, ruling that no court is authorized to decide whether the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) followed the letter of the law when terminating TPS.
Despite this ruling, the Supreme Court left open the possibility that a decision which violated the Constitution could be heard by a court. However, the majority opinion declared that the President Trump’s long record of racist statements against Haiti and Haitians was likely not enough to prove that the decision to terminate TPS for Haiti was unlawfully based on race. That leaves only a thin hope for the remaining lawsuits which have challenged other TPS designations.
When will the TPS decision go into effect?
Because of the Supreme Court’s procedures, the decision will not formally go into effect until 32 days after the ruling was issued. That means that until late July, roughly 350,000 Haitians and 4,000 Syrians with TPS keep their status. It also means that in other cases where the Trump administration advanced similar legal arguments, the government must return to the lower courts and ask for court orders to be lifted before terminations can go into effect.
As a result, the exact fate of TPS holders is still unclear, with TPS recipients still hoping for last-ditch advocacy or legislative efforts to delay termination of their status. Making matters worse, in the days following the decision, the Trump administration has added substantial confusion by telling employers that TPS work authorization is set to expire even before the court orders are lifted.
TPS work authorization in flux
Since February, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has been instructing employers hiring or employing TPS recipients that work authorization for most recipients will expire on specific dates even though the government cannot terminate that authorization until a court order preventing terminations is formally lifted. For example, in February, USCIS told employers that TPS work permits would expire on March 15. When March 15 came around, the date was extended to March 27. That date was then extended to July 1, then July 10, and now July 17 for some countries and July 24 for others.
Initially, these notices got little attention, as it was understood that the court orders remained in effect and the dates kept moving forward. However, following the Supreme Court’s decision, many employers, fueled by conflicting media reports about the legal ramifications of USCIS’ notices, began to interpret these dates as instructions to fire the hundreds of thousands of people lawfully working on TPS, under the belief that USCIS would actively terminate any work permits once reaching the date.
However, crucially, there are still active court orders barring the federal government from terminating TPS and its work authorization early. That would suggest that USCIS cannot legally take any actions to terminate work authorization without directly violating the court orders. And since USCIS has issued similar notices multiple times in the past, and each time moved the date forward before taking any action, it remains entirely possible that these notices have no formal impact whatsoever on current work authorization. Nevertheless, many employers are not taking risks, and have fired many people who have been lawfully working in this country for years even before their status has been terminated. And even those whose jobs are safe for now are still facing an impending loss of status which could come at any point in the next few weeks.
What happens to Haitians with TPS?
For many, there are few options. Those who come from countries which are still unsafe to return are in a particular bind. The situation in Haiti has continued to deteriorate, with the United Nations declaring on July 10 that “Haiti’s crisis has become deeper, more complex, and more urgent,” citing a record 1.5 million people internally displaced in the country, as well as a rise in crimes against children and a continued deterioration of public services.
Few of the 350,000 Haitians in the United States have any current path to permanent legal status. Some have applied for asylum, but the Trump administration has effectively taken that option out of reach through a series of policies which have seen asylum grant rates plummet, with approvals now below 5%. For most others who don’t want to tempt fate by returning to Haiti, the only option may be to seek out safety in another country or risk remaining here without status.
What other countries are at risk of losing TPS?
Haitians are not the only nationality at risk of losing status. In total, federal courts have halted TPS terminations for 7 countries via court order: Burma, Ethiopia, Haiti, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen (court orders blocking the termination of TPS for Venezuela were put on hold by the Supreme Court in 2025). In addition, the Trump administration is likely to announce a decision on the fate of 170,000 Salvadorans with TPS soon, with the status currently set to expire on September 9, 2026.
That leaves an enormous population of people in limbo, their lives set to be upended in a matter of days, weeks, or months. The impact will be significant on both them and their families, as well as their American friends and employers. The economic impacts are likely to be significant in communities with high concentrations of TPS recipients.
Beyond economics, once TPS recipients lose their status, they are now at risk of arrest by ICE and may end up in immigration court proceedings facing removal.
For these hundreds of thousands of people, Congress is the last hope. In April, the House of Representatives voted to extend TPS protections for Haitians following a successful discharge petition. Congress could do the same with bills like the Dream and Promise Act, which would give most TPS recipients a path to permanent status. But the fate of that legislation would be uncertain and even if Congress passed it, President Trump could veto it. For now, all eyes rest on Congress in the hopes that the worst will not come to pass.
