Ukrainians and Sudanese with temporary legal status will keep protections for now

WASHINGTON — Immigrants living in the United States with humanitarian status from Ukraine and Sudan will retain their deportation protections and work authorizations for now, the Department of Homeland Security said over the weekend. 

More than 100,000 Ukrainians and roughly 2,000 Sudanese with Temporary Protected Status will keep their protections until “such an announcement is made,” the agency said.

It’s the same move the Trump administration made as the deadline for TPS renewal for more than 200,000 Salvadorans approached last month. 

While immigrants with TPS from El Salvador, Sudan and Ukraine will have deportation protections, it places more than 300,000 people in limbo because it’s not clear how long the protections will last.

"Families who depend on this status to stay safe and keep working deserve a formal decision in writing, not a weekend statement to press," Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, which helps resettle refugees and advocates for immigrants, said in a statement. "Keeping protections in place is the right call, but a promise to a reporter is not a policy." 

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has not indicated if DHS will renew protections for those TPS recipients who were granted the designation because they hail from countries deemed too dangerous for return.

Ukrainians received TPS in 2022 after Russia invaded their country and Sudanese were granted the designation several times, most recently in 2022, because of an ongoing civil war. The State Department currently has a do-not-travel advisory, its highest advisory level, for Ukraine and Sudan.

If no decision is made, an automatic six-month extension kicks in, based on the TPS statute. But DHS has not confirmed whether any such extension is in place for Salvadorians, Sudanese or Ukrainians. 

After Monday, the last remaining country with TPS will be Lebanon, which is set to expire Nov. 27.

The second Trump administration has moved to wind down the TPS program established by Congress in the 1990s. The Supreme Court cleared the way for that initiative after it ruled this summer that decisions from the executive branch regarding a TPS designation are not subject to judicial review. 

So far, more than 1 million immigrants who have TPS have been stripped of their legal protections from the 17 countries that initially had the designation at the start of the second Trump administration.