Miami, Oct 20 (AP) More than 1,00,000 people from Ukraine and Sudan can stay in the United States without immediate risk of deportation, the Department of Homeland Security said, in what amounts to a temporary reprieve after their right to stay in the country was set to expire Monday.
Temporary Protected Status was set to end October 19 for about 1,01,000 Ukrainians and 1,800 Sudanese. But DHS said an announcement “will be made at the appropriate time”. Until then, the department said in a written statement, Ukrainians and Sudanese in the US covered by those temporary measures “retain protection”. The Department did not indicate how long they could stay or when a final announcement would be made on their status.
DHS did not respond to a question about whether they can keep their work permits, but TPS generally allows people to work while their protections remain in effect.
A relief without details
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The decision Monday marks another incident where the Trump administration, which has previously sought to end these temporary protections from deportation and send people back to their home countries, has allowed people covered by the temporary status to stay in the country but without giving any guidance as to how long.
Yuriy Boyechko, CEO of Hope For Ukraine, a nonprofit that provides humanitarian aid in Ukraine and helps resettle newcomers in the US, described the government’s announcement as “last-minute patches”.
It is a “bandage that has been placed on a wound that does not solve the real issue”, he said. “It’s time for the US to come up with some normal path to permanent residency for all these people,” Boyechko noted. He emphasised that they cannot safely return to Ukraine.
Andrew Arthur, a national-security and immigration expert at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that favours lower immigration, said the government will eventually decide but faces no deadline. Until then, nothing changes, he said.
“It’s simply going to be an extension until it is a termination,” he said. “It’s beyond cavil that both Sudan and Ukraine are experiencing ongoing armed conflict, and therefore the secretary is well within his authority to continue TPS for each of them.”
The context of the decisions to keep the protections
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The Trump administration has already terminated TPS for more than 1 million people from 13 countries, including Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Syria.
But in a change in practice roughly a month ago, the administration kept protections in place for nearly 2,00,000 Salvadorans whose TPS was set to expire on September 9. In that case, they also said that they were going to make a decision at the appropriate time and that in the meantime, people from El Salvador could continue to work and live in the US.
Activists and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have been raising the alarm over the upcoming deadline for TPS to expire for Ukrainians, arguing that conditions remain unsafe for them to return home amid the war with Russia.
Ukraine was first designated for TPS in April 2022, following Russia’s full-scale invasion two months earlier. The Biden administration subsequently extended the designation, most recently in January 2025, when DHS authorised an additional 18 months of protection through October 2026.
The TPS programme for Sudan was established in 1997, and since then, successive US administrations have extended it due to the armed conflict and political instability that have plagued the African nation.
The decision Monday comes two weeks before the November 3 midterm elections, when Trump’s hard-line immigration policies will face a test at the ballot box.
The TPS programme has offered protections for decades but is controversial
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The U.S. Congress created TPS in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters or civil strife.
It allows people already in the country to remain and work for renewable periods if the homeland security secretary determines conditions are unsafe for their return. But it doesn’t give them a pathway to permanent residency.
Supporters say that using this tool protects people from being returned to dangerous situations and that uprooting people covered by TPS after years of living in the US is cruel. Critics, especially in the Trump administration, say successive administrations have extended these protections for years regardless of what has happened in the home countries.
Federal rules say TPS is automatically extended for six months if the secretary doesn’t make a determination at least 60 days before the designation expires.
Advocates are grateful for DHS decision, warn about the war
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Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, noted that Ukraine and Sudan meet the legal conditions for TPS to be extended.
“It is not safe for these families to go home,” Vignarajah said.
(PTI News)
