Judge approves Trump effort to end South Sudan TPS protections

Decision follows supreme court ruling that allowed US government to strip protections for Haitians and Syrians Temporary protected status (TPS) for hundreds of South Sudanese nationals in the United States is set to end after a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration can move forward with stripping their protections. On Friday, US district judge Patti Saris of the district of Massachusetts rejected an attempt by immigrant rights organizations including the New York-based African Communities Together to keep TPS for South Sudanese nationals living in the US. Saris’s decision follows a 6-3 supreme court ruling in June allowing the Trump administration to strip hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians of TPS, which granted them permission to work and live legally in the US. The supreme court’s conservative majority overturned lower court rulings in New York and Washington DC, which had blocked the administration from ending TPS for more than 350,000 Haitians and about 6,100 Syrians.

Missing media or need the complete publisher report? Open The Guardian World

Scoop News DeskSouth Sudan · Published Friday, August 7, 2026 at 6:34 PM UTCUpdated Friday, August 7, 2026 at 7:21 PM UTC

Scoop News reporting summary

The text below was supplied by the Scoop Newsroom app. Third-party reporting is attributed in the source panel.

According to Saris, the plaintiffs’ argument undermined itself, because if the homeland security department (DHS) lacked the authority to terminate South Sudan’s TPS designation, it also would have lacked the authority to issue the designation initially. “South Sudan’s original TPS designation would thus be invalid by the same token as its termination,” Saris wrote. Since gaining independence in 2011, more than 400,000 people have been killed in conflict, with fighting and ethnic violence continuing to claim civilian lives. The Trump administration’s effort to strip TPS protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants comes despite the US government’s own highest-level travel warnings for Americans to several countries affected, including South Sudan, Haiti and Syria.