Federal judge extends TPS for Yemenis, saying the administration bypassed required steps
A federal judge in Manhattan blocked the Trump administration from forcing about 3,000 Yemeni refugees to leave the United States by ending their Temporary Protected Status, granting an emergency extension Friday as a lawsuit seeking to preserve the protections continued. Judge Dale E. Ho said the status, which had been repeatedly granted to Yemenis and was set to expire Monday, had to be extended again while the case plays out.
Ho issued the order after the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had said protections for Yemeni beneficiaries were due to end. TPS, under the law, allows people already granted the designation to remain in the United States, prohibits removal while they hold the status, and provides access to work and travel authorization.
The judge’s ruling centered on what Ho described as the purpose and legal process of Temporary Protected Status and on the conditions Congress linked to the designation. In his order, Ho wrote that the people granted TPS were “ordinary, law-abiding people” whom the government had determined could face threats to their safety if returned to Yemen, an environment marked by ongoing armed conflict, according to the Associated Press.
Ho also faulted the Trump administration’s approach in terminating TPS for Yemen. He criticized former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, saying Congress set out a process for TPS to be altered or rescinded, but that she did not follow it. Ho was particularly critical of a social media message Noem sent in early December after she said she had met with President Donald Trump and recommended a full travel ban—citing “every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”
In the ruling, Ho noted that on Feb. 13, Noem announced in a news release that TPS for Yemen would be terminated. Ho wrote that the termination decision was based on a determination that allowing Yemenis to stay in the U.S. was “contrary to our national interest.” Ho’s opinion began a passage of his conclusion with the statement, “TPS holders from Yemen are not ‘killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.’”
Ho’s emergency order included examples intended to illustrate how TPS status had been applied to specific people. He cited among 2,810 Yemenis holding TPS and another 425 who had applied, including a pregnant 33-year-old woman in Detroit who was due to give birth this month and whose unborn child had a congenital heart condition that is not treatable in Yemen, and a 50-year-old former human rights worker in Brooklyn who is a target of Houthi-aligned militias in Yemen.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the order reflected the administration’s disagreement with the result. The department said in a statement that “Temporary means temporary” and that the final decision would not come from “activist judges legislating from the bench.” The department also said allowing TPS Yemen beneficiaries to remain temporarily was contrary to the administration’s national interest, adding that it was “returning TPS to its original temporary intent.”
Advocates for the plaintiffs described the ruling as a vindication of limits they say Congress set for TPS. Razeen Zaman, director of immigrant rights at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, applauded Ho’s decision, saying in a release that “the court has made clear that humanitarian statutes like TPS cannot be used as a deportation pipeline.” Zaman said Homeland Security had already determined it was unsafe for Yemeni refugees to return to Yemen but “terminated their protection anyway,” and he said Ho’s decision “affirms that protection must be based on facts and conditions on the ground, not on the political appetite to end it.”
The AALDEF press release also included remarks from plaintiffs, who were identified by pseudonyms to protect their safety. One plaintiff described people fighting to preserve protections as “doctors, engineers, and pilots like myself, and also drivers, deli workers, and countless other people who contribute meaningfully every day, supporting not just our own families but the broader fabric of society,” adding that their presence “represents resilience, skill, and dedication — values that strengthen the nation as a whole.” Another plaintiff, described as a woman, called the decision “a lifeline for my family” and said it was “the moment we finally breathed a sigh of relief after months of existential anxiety.”
Yemen was first designated for Temporary Protected Status in 2015, about a year after Yemen’s civil war began. The Obama and Biden administrations extended the designation multiple times, with officials estimating in 2024 that 2,300 Yemenis were eligible to reregister and 1,700 Yemenis were newly eligible.
The emergency extension came after the Trump administration terminated TPS for people from nine countries, including Haiti, Venezuela and Ethiopia. DHS said Friday that Noem had reviewed conditions in Yemen and consulted with government agencies before determining it no longer met legal requirements for temporary status.