The Trump administration said it will end Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from Somalia, setting a March 17 deadline for those covered by the program to leave the United States.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that affected Somalis must depart by March 17, when existing protections—last extended by President Joe Biden—will expire. The move affects “hundreds of people,” a small subset of immigrants in the United States who hold TPS protections.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the decision was prompted by changes in Somalia. “Temporary means temporary,” Noem said, adding that the policy puts “Americans first.”
Noem said circumstances in Somalia “have improved to the point that it no longer meets the law’s requirement for Temporary Protected Status.” The rollback comes as the administration pursues broader immigration enforcement and changes TPS designations across multiple countries.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, along with its Minnesota chapter, criticized the decision. CAIR called it a “bigoted attack” and said in a statement that dismantling protections for Somalis would send some people back to a “war-torn, unstable nation.” CAIR said, “This decision does not reflect changed conditions in Somalia,” and it said, “By dismantling protections for one of the most vulnerable Black and Muslim communities, this decision exposes an agenda rooted in exclusion, not public safety.”
Somalia is located in the horn of Africa and is described as one of the world’s poorest nations, with chronic strife exacerbated by multiple natural disasters, including severe droughts. The Associated Press report also cited armed conflict and violence in Somalia, saying an al-Qaida affiliate, al-Shabab, controls parts of the country and has carried out truck bombings and other assaults in Mogadishu in recent years that killed dozens of people.
Temporary Protected Status was established by Congress in 1990 to help foreign nationals who have fled unstable, threatening conditions and are living in the United States. The program allows the executive branch to designate a country—generally in 18-month increments—for protected status, and eligible people already in the U.S. can apply with Homeland Security for that designation. If approved, recipients can legally work and are protected from deportation, but the program does not provide a pathway to a green card or U.S. citizenship; recipients rely on the government renewing the designation every few years.
Critics say those renewals happen so often that the status can function as permanent protection, even though TPS designations are supposed to be temporary. The Associated Press report said Somalia first received TPS under President George H.W. Bush amid a civil war in 1991, and that the status has been extended for decades, most recently by Biden in July 2024.
A 2025 congressional report cited in the Associated Press story said the Somali TPS population was 705 out of nearly 1.3 million TPS immigrants. That report also said Somalis have received more than two dozen extensions because of “insecurity and ongoing armed conflict” that pose serious threats to the safety of people returning to the country.
It was not immediately clear, according to the report, how quickly Somalis covered by TPS could be removed once their protections expire. The Associated Press report said most administration efforts to end TPS designations have ended up in court, and that people with TPS can also apply for asylum or other immigration avenues—though it said the administration has made those options more difficult for Somalis and other nationalities.