A U.S. district judge in Massachusetts on Friday ruled that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can terminate deportation protection status for South Sudan, following a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year.
“The Supreme Court rejected materially identical challenges … and Plaintiffs have no liberty or property interests left other than those provided by statute or regulation based on their individual circumstances through other statutory provisions,” U.S. District Judge Patti B. Saris wrote in the order, adding that their “newly proposed claims would be futile.”
The judge was referring to the Supreme Court’s June decision, Mullin v. Doe, which allowed the Trump administration to end temporary protected status (TPS) for Haiti and Syria. The court ruled that federal immigration law bars courts from reviewing decisions by DHS to end TPS for foreign nationals.
Earlier this week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said that, pending a court order, temporary work permits for South Sudanese nationals on TPS will expire on Aug. 10.
DHS in its notice last year said South Sudan no longer met the conditions for the designation, saying that there “is no longer an ongoing armed conflict that poses a serious threat to the personal safety of returning South Sudanese nationals” following years of civil war in the country.
“The termination of the South Sudan designation is required because it is contrary to the national interest to permit South Sudanese nationals (or nationals having no nationality who last habitually resided in South Sudan) to remain temporarily in the United States,” the notice reads.
South Sudan has faced bouts of violent conflict since 2011, with a civil war lasting between 2013 and 2018.
President Donald Trump has sought to strip legal status from hundreds of thousands of people from a number of countries since taking office in January 2025 as part of his broad illegal immigration crackdown.
The TPS program is a humanitarian designation under U.S. law for countries stricken by war, natural disasters, or other catastrophes, allowing recipients living in the United States protection from deportation and access to work permits.
The Trump administration has argued that TPS, established under the Immigration Act of 1990, has been misused and is intended to be a temporary solution.
Nationals from Syria, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, and other countries have also seen their TPS status revoked. The Trump administration has also separately set a limit on refugee admissions to the lowest ceiling on record.
