The Trump administration rescinded temporary protected status, or deportation protection, for Ethiopian illegal immigrants residing in the United States, the Department of Homeland Security announced Friday.
The move is the latest in a series of recent Trump administration decisions to revoke TPS for immigrants from multiple countries, following Burma’s revocation in November.
Roughly 4,500 Ethiopians will no longer be able to work legally in the U.S. and must leave the country by mid-February, according to a Friday notice in the Federal Register.
“The designation of Ethiopia is set to expire on December 12, 2025. After reviewing country conditions and consulting with appropriate U.S. Government agencies, the Secretary determined that Ethiopia no longer continues to meet the conditions for the designation for Temporary Protected Status,” the notice says. “The Secretary, therefore, is terminating the Temporary Protected Status designation of Ethiopia as required by statute.”
TPS is a designation made every 18 months by the DHS secretary that determines whether a country should be exempt from having its citizens returned from the U.S. because its government is unable to accept them due to natural disasters, famine, or war. The DHS secretary is responsible for deciding whether to renew TPS for a country.
Ethiopia was first given TPS in December 2022 amid severe drought and armed conflict. The status was renewed in mid-2024 and was slated for renewal or expiration on Friday.
Under TPS, citizens of a particular country who are in the U.S. may apply for a two-year status that protects them from deportation and grants them a document to work legally in the country for that period.
Congress created TPS in 1990 to help countries that had been seriously harmed. Countries can request TPS from the U.S. government at any time.
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Trump has criticized his predecessors for renewing TPS for various nations and said crises in those countries that began decades ago still affect their ability to take back their own citizens.
However, the Trump administration renewed TPS designations for most participating countries in 2019 after it was blocked in court from removing them. In other cases, it continued the years-old program because conditions in those countries had not dramatically improved.
