After Haiti and Syria, judge allows Trump to end deportation protections for 5,000 Ethiopians

WASHINGTON, DC: The Trump administration can now revoke the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of around 5,000 Ethiopians, as a federal Judge on Tuesday, August 18, cleared the way.

Earlier, the US Supreme Court in June allowed the Trump administration to end the TPS for roughly 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians, who had been living in the United States on a humanitarian basis.

Federal Court’s latest decision to end humanitarian residency for Ethiopian grants a solid support for Trump’s crackdown efforts on immigration and asylum.

Court denies request to postpone relief termination

US District Court Judge Brian E Murphy rejected a request from the African Communities Together to delay the termination of TPS status for around 5,000 Ethiopians while the group’s legal challenge plays out.

African Communities Together is an organization that advocates for African immigrants in the US.

This ruling is in continuation of several earlier rulings that will strip temporary protections for more than a million people who until recently had been allowed to legally live and work in the US.

In late 2020, armed conflict began in Ethiopia’s Tigray state and later spread to other regions in the country. According to an estimate from the African Union, the conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Court allows Trump administration to strip TPS from Haitians and Syrians

The Supreme Court in June this year, ruled that the Trump administration can strip protected status from hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian migrants, which has allowed them to stay in the US for years.

The 6-3 ruling overturned decisions by federal judges that had blocked the administration from terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 350,000 people from Haiti and 6,100 from Syria.

What is Temporary Protected Status?

Under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), people fleeing war, natural disasters, or humanitarian crises get temporary permission to live and work in the US without fear of being deported.

Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in US immigration began on November 29, 1990, when President George H.W. Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990 into law.

President Trump has accused the Biden administration of repeatedly extending the permission, arguing that those permissions are temporary and not a permanent solution.

The Biden administration in 2022 granted certain citizens of Ethiopia who recently arrived to the US an 18-month temporary protection from deportation.

Those protections were again extended in 2024 by then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas because of the ongoing conflict.