The Trump Department of Homeland Security may move forward with ending temporary protected status (TPS) for nearly 60,000 foreign nationals residing in the United States, a federal appellate court ruled Monday.
In its unanimous decision, a three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request by the Trump administration to stay (“pause”) a December 2025 ruling by Biden-appointed District Judge Trina Thompson. That order vacated DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s revocation of TPS for approximately 50,000 Hondurans, 3,000 Nicaraguans, and 7,000 Nepalis residing in America.
According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the DHS secretary may designate certain foreign countries for TPS “due to conditions in the country that temporarily prevent the country’s nationals from returning safely, or in certain circumstances, where the country is unable to handle the return of its nationals adequately.” These conditions include natural disasters and violent conflicts, as well as “other extraordinary and temporary conditions.”
As described by the 9th Circuit, plaintiffs “asserted statutory and constitutional challenges to [DHS’s] termination decisions” in their class action lawsuit against the administration. Thompson agreed with such claims and ruled that the government violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), which governs “how federal administrative agencies make rules and how they adjudicate administrative litigation,” according to Cornell Law School.
The 9th Circuit’s three-judge panel weighed several factors when considering the Trump administration’s request to pause Thompson’s order, including whether it showed that it is “likely to succeed on the merits” and whether it will suffer irreparable harm if a stay is not granted. The judges determined that the administration satisfied such criteria and granted its request for stay, thus permitting Noem’s cancellation of TPS for the aforementioned groups to move forward.
“We conclude that the government is likely to succeed on the merits of its appeal either by showing that the district court lacked jurisdiction or by prevailing on plaintiffs’ arbitrary-and-capricious APA challenge,” the court ruled.
The 9th Circuit judges went on to note that Noem’s termination of temporary protected status is “an action expressly authorized by statute.” They further observed that a “preliminary analysis of plaintiffs’ APA claims is that the government is likely to prevail in its argument that the Secretary’s decision-making process in terminating TPS for Honduras, Nicaragua, and Nepal was not arbitrary and capricious.”
“Specifically, the government can likely show that the administrative record adequately supports the Secretary’s action, that the TPS statute does not require the Secretary to consider intervening country conditions arising after the events that led to the initial TPS designation, and that the Secretary’s decision not to consider intervening conditions does not amount to an unexplained change in policy,” the ruling reads. “The government also can likely show that the Secretary consulted with appropriate agencies …, adequately considered conditions in Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua, and gave facially legitimate reasons for why terminating TPS for each country was warranted.”
“The other stay factors also favor the government,” the court added.
In granting the government’s request, the three-judge panel also cited the U.S. Supreme Court, which has previously approved similar Trump administration applications seeking to pause lower court injunctions blocking Noem from vacating TPS for Venezuela. The 9th Circuit judges noted that such “orders contained no reasoning, so they do not inform our analysis of the legal issues in this case, and the issues in any event are not identical,” but added that “the stay applications involved similar assertions of harm by both parties, and we have been admonished that the Court’s stay orders must inform ‘how [we] should exercise [our] equitable discretion in like cases.’”
“We therefore conclude that the equitable factors favor a stay,” the court wrote.
The three-judge panel was comprised of Judges Eric Miller (Trump appointee), Consuelo Callahan (Bush 43 appointee), and Michael Hawkins (Clinton appointee).
Hawkins authored a concurring opinion saying that he agrees with the court’s judgement and the part of the order “heeding guidance from the Supreme Court’s stay orders in the Venezuela TPS status case in this circuit.” However, he wrote, “I would not address the merits of the plaintiff’s APA claims at this point in the appeal process.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics and RealClearHealth. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
