What the DHS announced

The Department of Homeland Security said more than 100,000 people from Ukraine and Sudan can stay in the United States without immediate risk of deportation, after their temporary protected status was set to end on Monday for about 101,000 Ukrainians and 1,800 Sudanese.

The agency offered few details about what comes next:

• •It said an announcement would be made "at the appropriate time" and that until then the affected Ukrainians and Sudanese "retain protection".
• •It gave no timeline for how long the protections would last or when a final decision would come.
• •It did not respond to a question about whether beneficiaries can keep their work permits, though TPS generally allows work while protections are in effect.

Calls for permanence and doubts

Yuriy Boyechko, CEO of the non-profit Hope For Ukraine, called the announcement "last-minute patches" and "a bandage that has been placed on a wound that does not solve the real issue". He urged the US to create a normal path to permanent residency and said Ukrainians cannot safely return home.

Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies said the government faces no deadline and will eventually decide, and that until then nothing changes. In his view the measure is effectively an extension before termination, because ongoing armed conflict in Sudan and Ukraine lets the secretary lawfully continue TPS. "It's simply going to be an extension until it is a termination," he said.

Background to the designations

The reprieve reverses, at least for now, a course the Trump administration had previously pursued: it sought to end these temporary protections and has already terminated TPS for more than 1 million people from 13 countries, including Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Syria.

The move also follows a similar step taken about a month earlier, when the administration kept protections for nearly 200,000 Salvadorans whose TPS was set to expire on 9 September, using the same "appropriate time" language while allowing them to keep working and living in the US.

Other details behind the designations:

• •Activists and a bipartisan group of lawmakers had warned against letting Ukrainians' TPS lapse, arguing conditions remain unsafe for them to return home amid the war with Russia.
• •Ukraine was first designated for TPS in April 2022, after Russia's full-scale invasion two months earlier; the Biden administration last extended it in January 2025 for 18 months through October 2026.
• •The TPS program for Sudan was established in 1997 and has been extended by successive administrations because of armed conflict and political instability.

Timing before the midterms

The decision came two weeks before the midterm elections, at which Trump's hard-line immigration policies face a ballot-box test. The DHS has given no timeline for how long the protections will last, saying an announcement will come at the appropriate time; until then, the affected Ukrainians and Sudanese retain protection.