The Trump administration has confirmed it will end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somali immigrants, requiring those affected to leave the United States by March 17, 2026.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the decision in a post on X. The move was later reiterated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which said Somali nationals currently covered by TPS would lose their legal protections when the designation expires.
TPS allows migrants from countries facing armed conflict, natural disasters or other extraordinary conditions to live and work temporarily in the United States. Somalia was first granted the designation in 1991 amid civil war, and it has been renewed repeatedly by successive administrations.
In a statement, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said conditions in Somalia no longer met the legal threshold for the program. “Temporary means temporary,” she said, adding that allowing Somali nationals to remain in the country was “contrary to our national interests” and that the decision put “Americans first”.
The Department of Homeland Security said existing protections, last extended by former President Joe Biden in July 2024, will lapse in March next year.
The decision affects a relatively small group. According to the Congressional Research Service, about 705 Somali nationals were enrolled in TPS last year, out of nearly 1.3 million people covered by the program across all countries.
The move is the latest in a broader rollback of TPS designations under President Donald Trump’s second term. His administration has also sought to end protections for migrants from Afghanistan, Venezuela, Haiti and South Sudan, with several of those decisions facing legal challenges. In October, the Supreme Court allowed the administration to proceed with ending TPS for Venezuelans.
Trump has focused on Minnesota, home to one of the largest Somali communities in the US, where tensions have escalated amid stepped-up immigration enforcement and protests in Minneapolis.
A 2025 congressional report noted that Somali TPS had been extended more than two dozen times due to persistent insecurity that posed “serious threats to the safety of returnees”.
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