More than 100,000 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 Oct. 19 for about 101,000 Ukrainians and 1,800 Sudanese, the AP reports. 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 from the AP about whether they can keep their work permits, but TPS generally allows people to work while their protections remain in effect. The decision 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.
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 200,000 Salvadorans whose TPS was set to expire Sept. 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 had 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 authorized an additional 18 months of protection through October 2026. The TPS program for Sudan was established in 1997, and since then, successive administrations have extended it due to the armed conflict and political instability that have plagued the African nation.
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, noted that Ukraine and Sudan are not safe and meet the legal conditions for TPS to be extended. “Russia’s war on Ukraine is nearing its fifth year, and Ukrainians are bracing for another winter under drone and missile strikes, driving civilian casualties and devastating critical infrastructure. Sudan remains locked in a brutal civil war marked by famine, widespread human rights abuses, and the hallmarks of genocide,” Vignarajah said. “It is not safe for these families to go home.”