Federal Judge Clears Way to End South Sudan TPS

A federal judge in Massachusetts on Friday, August 7, cleared the way for the Trump administration to terminate Temporary Protected Status for South Sudanese nationals, a move that will end deportation protections and work authorization for hundreds of people. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Patti B. Saris follows a major Supreme Court decision in June that significantly limited judicial review of such immigration policy decisions.

Judge Saris rejected a renewed legal challenge from South Sudanese nationals and the advocacy group African Communities Together, who had argued that the Department of Homeland Security lacked the statutory authority to terminate the program. The plaintiffs contended that the original 1990 law creating TPS vested authority solely with the attorney general, not DHS, which was created in 2002. Saris dismissed this argument, writing that it rested on a self-contradictory foundation, as it would also invalidate DHS's authority to have issued the protections in the first place.

The Department of Homeland Security announced last November that South Sudan no longer met the conditions for TPS, citing the end of the ongoing armed conflict that had originally...