US grants deportation reprieve to migrants from Ukraine and Sudan

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 on Monday.

Temporary protected status was set to end on Monday for about 101,000 Ukrainians and 1,800 Sudanese. But the 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.

The DHS did not respond to a question 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.

Yuriy Boyechko, CEO of Hope For Ukraine, a non-profit that provides humanitarian aid in Ukraine and helps resettle newcomers in the US, described the government’s announcement as “last-minute patches”.

It is a “bandage that has been placed on a wound that does not solve the real issue,” he said. “It’s time for US to come up with some normal path to permanent residency for all these people,” Boyechko noted. He emphasized that they cannot safely return to Ukraine.

Andrew Arthur, a national-security and immigration expert at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington thinktank that favors lower immigration, said the government will eventually decide but faces no deadline. Until then, nothing changes, he said.

“It’s simply going to be an extension until it is a termination,” he said. “It’s beyond cavil that both Sudan and Ukraine are experiencing ongoing armed conflict, and therefore the secretary is well within his authority to continue TPS for each of them.”

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 Salvadorians whose TPS was set to expire on 9 September. 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 have 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 the DHS authorized an additional 18 months of protection through October 2026.

The TPS program for Sudan was established in 1997, and since then, successive US administrations have extended it due to the armed conflict and political instability that have plagued the African nation.

Monday’s decision comes two weeks before the midterm elections, when Trump’s hard line immigration policies will face a test at the ballot box.