Federal Appeals Court Grants Stay on Temporary Protected Status for 60,000 Migrants, Allowing Trump Administration to Proceed with Removal
In a significant legal development, a federal appeals court has temporarily halted a lower court’s decision that had maintained temporary protections for approximately 60,000 migrants from Central America, Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua. This move paves the way for the potential removal of thousands of individuals whose Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations have expired or are nearing expiration.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco granted an emergency stay pending an appeal, following a lawsuit filed by the National TPS Alliance, which alleges that the administration’s actions in terminating TPS for these migrant groups were unlawful.
In their ruling, the judges noted, “The district court’s order granting plaintiffs’ motion to postpone, entered July 31, 2025, is stayed pending further order of this court.” The panel comprises appointees of Democratic President Bill Clinton and Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump.
TPS is a designation that allows migrants to remain in the U.S., avoid deportation, and work legally if their home countries are deemed unsafe due to natural disasters, political instability, or other dangerous conditions. The Trump administration has been actively seeking to rescind this protection, thereby making many more individuals eligible for removal.
If the current rulings stand, an estimated 7,000 Nepalese migrants whose TPS designations expired on August 5 may face removal. The TPS designations and legal status of around 51,000 Hondurans and 3,000 Nicaraguans are set to expire on September 8.
Immigrant rights advocates argue that TPS holders from Nepal have been residing in the U.S. for over a decade, while those from Honduras and Nicaragua have lived in the country for nearly a quarter of a century, following Hurricane Mitch in 1998.
Jessica Bansal, an attorney at the National Day Laborer Organization, stated, “The Trump administration is systematically de-documenting immigrants who have lived lawfully in this country for decades, raising U.S.-citizen children, starting businesses, and contributing to their communities.”
Secretary Kristi Noem ended these programs after determining that conditions no longer warranted protections. In her July 31 order, U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson kept the protections in place while the case proceeds, with the next hearing scheduled for November 18.
Judge Thompson stated that the administration ended the migrant status protections without a thorough review of country conditions, such as political violence in Honduras and the impact of recent hurricanes and storms in Nicaragua.
The Trump administration has already terminated TPS designations for about 350,000 Venezuelans, 500,000 Haitians, over 160,000 Ukrainians, and thousands of people from Afghanistan and Cameroon. Several of these cases are currently under review in federal courts.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers argue that Secretary Noem’s decisions were unlawful due to their alleged predetermination based on President Donald Trump’s campaign promises and potential racial bias. However, Drew Ensign, a U.S. deputy assistant attorney general, contends that the government experiences ongoing irreparable harm from its inability to carry out the programs it deems necessary.
In response to this latest development, Honduras Deputy Foreign Minister Gerardo Torres expressed disappointment, stating, “We’re going to wait to see what the National TPS Alliance decides, it’s possible the case could be elevated to the United States Supreme Court, but we have to wait.”