The Department of Homeland Security has officially terminated Temporary Protected Status for Somalia, closing out a designation that had remained in place for roughly 35 years and marking another significant milestone in the Trump administration’s aggressive push to unwind what officials describe as an immigration program that had drifted far from its original temporary purpose.

According to USCIS, the termination took effect August 14, 2026, following a lengthy legal battle that had repeatedly delayed the administration from carrying out its original timeline. Somalia TPS related employment authorization documents are no longer valid as of that date, meaning Somali nationals who had relied on the program to work legally in the United States have lost that authorization.

The termination traces back to January, when then Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem first announced the administration’s intent to end Somalia’s TPS designation, initially setting a deadline of mid March for Somali nationals to leave the country. DHS argued at the time that conditions in Somalia had improved sufficiently to no longer justify continued humanitarian protection, while also citing what officials described as national security and public safety risks, along with concerns about fraud and broader foreign policy considerations.

Somalia was first granted Temporary Protected Status back in 1991 amid a brutal civil war that made return unsafe for many of its citizens. The designation was extended repeatedly over more than three decades, most recently by the Biden administration in September 2024, before the Trump administration moved to unwind it entirely as part of a broader effort targeting TPS designations covering thirteen different countries and affecting hundreds of thousands of immigrants nationwide.

The path to termination was anything but smooth. Advocacy groups, including African Communities Together and the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, filed a class action lawsuit in March alongside several individual Somali TPS holders, arguing that the administration’s decision violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the equal protection guarantees of the Fifth Amendment. That legal challenge succeeded in temporarily halting the termination while the case worked its way through federal court.

The legal landscape shifted dramatically in June, when the Supreme Court, powered by its six to three conservative majority, ruled that the Trump administration could proceed with ending similar TPS protections for Haiti and Syria. That decision significantly narrowed the ability of lower court judges to block DHS TPS terminations, effectively removing one of the most reliable legal tools advocacy groups had used to delay enforcement actions across multiple countries.

Even after the Supreme Court ruling, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston initially kept a temporary block on the Somalia termination in place while she considered whether the plaintiffs could pursue a narrower legal challenge on grounds the Supreme Court’s ruling had not directly addressed. That additional review process concluded on Friday, August 14, when Burroughs issued her final ruling clearing the way for DHS to move forward.

In her ruling, Burroughs concluded that the plaintiffs had not demonstrated a sufficient legal basis to continue blocking the administration’s termination decision. She specifically rejected arguments that the potential threat of future immigration enforcement itself created a protected liberty interest, while noting that individual due process protections would still apply to any Somali national who later faces detention or removal proceedings.

The judge also directly addressed and rejected claims from plaintiffs that the administration’s decision was driven by racial bias, an argument that had pointed to past comments from Trump describing Somalis in derogatory terms.

While acknowledging that the plaintiffs had laid out what she called a strong case for why certain statements could be viewed as racially charged, Burroughs wrote that she could not find a viable legal path to conclude the plaintiffs would ultimately succeed on that specific claim, citing the recent precedent set in Mullin v. Doe.

Burroughs additionally rejected a separate argument that the DHS secretary lacked the legal authority to terminate TPS designations in the first place. She concluded that Congress’s creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and the accompanying reorganization of federal immigration authority, had properly transferred that power from the attorney general to the homeland security secretary, further undercutting the legal foundation plaintiffs had relied upon.

According to the official Federal Register notice, DHS’s finding was based on a determination that Somalia no longer met the statutory conditions required to maintain a TPS designation. The department concluded that the nature of the armed conflict in Somalia had changed substantially since the original 1991 designation, and that ongoing violence no longer fully prevented Somali nationals from safely returning to their country.

Government estimates place the number of people directly affected by the termination at approximately 1,100 individuals who held approved Somalia based TPS status, with roughly another 1,380 applications still pending at the time of the official notice. Separate reporting has cited a higher figure of roughly 2,471 Somali nationals originally affected when the termination was first announced, reflecting the different populations captured at various stages of the process.

The termination arrives alongside heightened scrutiny of Somali immigrant communities in certain American cities, most notably Minneapolis, where DHS has continued Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations tied to a massive fraud investigation. That scheme, estimated at roughly nine billion dollars, involved members of the local Somali community and has become a flashpoint in the broader national debate over immigration enforcement and government program integrity.

An estimated 600 Somali nationals holding TPS protection reside in Minnesota alone, a fact that has placed the state at the center of both the fraud investigation and the broader immigration enforcement debate.

The termination decision came just one day after the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul filed suit against the Trump administration over a large-scale federal immigration enforcement operation launched in the Twin Cities, underscoring the tension surrounding enforcement activity in the region.

Former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has remained a vocal defender of the administration’s broader TPS rollback, arguing publicly that Temporary Protected Status was never intended to function as a permanent or semi-permanent immigration pathway.

In prior public statements, Noem has pushed back forcefully against critics, including during a notable exchange with a national television host, insisting that facts on the ground, not political pressure, should determine when a TPS designation is no longer warranted.

The Somalia decision fits within a much larger pattern established by the second Trump administration, which has systematically moved to terminate TPS protections for the vast majority of countries that held designations when Trump returned to office.

According to research from the Pew Research Center, the administration has already ended TPS for most immigrants who previously held the status, with Somalia and Ethiopia representing among the last major designations still working through legal challenges before this latest ruling.