A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from stripping temporary deportation protections for nearly 3,000 Yemeni nationals living and working in the US. Judge Dale Ho of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, handed down his decision in favor of a group of Yemeni nationals who had sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over plans to end their Temporary Protected Status (TPS). The ruling comes amid the current administration’s broader immigration crackdown, which has seen the DHS—under President Donald Trump’s mandate—seek to end TPS designations for 13 different countries, including Ethiopia, Haiti and Syria.
In his ruling, Ho said that DHS, under then-Secretary Kristi Noem, terminated TPS status for Yemenis in “clear disregard” for the procedure Congress established:
This Court does not write on a blank slate. Defendants have terminated TPS for more than half a dozen countries in the last six months, under circumstances nearly indistinguishable from those here. And every district court that has considered the principal argument raised by the Plaintiffs here has granted a motion to postpone and/or vacate a termination of TPS for failing to comply with the requisite procedures for doing so established by Congress.
Additionally, Ho found that DHS failed to adequately justify the change and did not properly consider country conditions when deciding to revoke Yemen’s TPS status.
“TPS holders from Yemen are not ‘killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies,'” the judge concluded, citing a tweet by Noem:
They are ordinary, law-abiding people who have been granted status to be here because the Government has repeatedly determined, in accordance with the TPS statute, that Yemen is subject to an ongoing armed conflict, and that, due to that conflict, requiring them to return would pose a serious threat to their safety.
Friday’s ruling temporarily halts the administration’s newly introduced policy while the case proceeds.
TPS allows nationals of designated countries facing armed conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary conditions to live and work legally in the US. Yemen was first granted TPS in 2015 amid an escalating civil war that has since triggered one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises. For the roughly 2,800 Yemeni nationals covered under the program, the court’s decision preserves both their legal status and work authorization for the time being.
The DHS has maintained that it has the authority to review and terminate TPS designations and has argued that such decisions fall within its discretion. It is expected to challenge the ruling as the case moves forward.
The Yemenis’ case is part of a broader series of legal battles over the administration’s efforts to roll back TPS protections for multiple countries, a policy shift that has drawn sharp criticism from immigrant advocacy groups amid the anti-immigration sentiment and crackdown that has characterized Trump’s second term.
Friday’s decision adds to a growing body of litigation challenging recent efforts to terminate TPS designations, with courts increasingly scrutinizing DHS’s compliance with the procedural and statutory requirements set out by Congress. Further proceedings are expected to take place in the coming months, as the parties litigate the underlying claims to ensure that the termination of TPS for Yemen—and, by extension, those other designated countries—will be decided through the courts, rather than through unilateral executive action alone.
