Last updated: August 7, 2026
If you are one of the roughly 5,000 Ethiopian nationals who held Temporary Protected Status when this fight started, the last eight months have brought a stay, a court-ordered postponement, a Supreme Court decision, and now an appeals court reversal. This is not a situation where a single answer holds steady for long. At Getachew & Ansari Immigration Attorneys, P.C., our team handles Temporary Protected Status cases for clients throughout San Jose and the Bay Area, and we are laying out exactly what the record shows as of today, including the parts that are genuinely still unresolved.
What Happened to TPS Ethiopia in December 2025?
In December 2025, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem determined that Ethiopia no longer met the conditions required for a Temporary Protected Status designation. DHS published that decision in the Federal Register on December 15, 2025, setting a termination date of February 13, 2026, following a 60-day transition period. The termination was projected to affect roughly 5,000 people who held TPS under Ethiopia’s designation.
This was not the first time TPS Ethiopia faced an uncertain future. Our firm covered the program’s prior extension and redesignation in 2024, when DHS extended and redesignated Ethiopia for TPS for 18 months, from June 13, 2024 through December 12, 2025. The December 2025 termination decision reversed that course entirely, and it did not go unchallenged.
How Did a Federal Court Initially Stop the Termination?
On January 30, 2026, Judge Brian E. Murphy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts stayed the termination in African Communities Together et al. v. Noem, No. 1:26-cv-10278-BEM, while the court considered the plaintiffs’ emergency motion. On April 8, 2026, Judge Murphy went further, granting the plaintiffs’ motion to postpone the effective date of the termination while the underlying case continued, finding that DHS had acted without regard for the process Congress set out in the TPS statute. That order kept the termination on hold, not because DHS reversed its decision, but because the court found the agency likely had not followed the law in reaching it.
What Did the Supreme Court Decide in Mullin v. Doe?
On June 25, 2026, the Supreme Court decided Mullin v. Doe, a consolidated case involving challenges to TPS terminations for Syria and Haiti, not Ethiopia. In a 6-3 decision, the Court held that the TPS statute, 8 U.S.C. § 1254a(b)(5)(A), bars judicial review of nonconstitutional challenges to the Secretary’s decisions on TPS designation, termination, or extension, including claims framed as procedural defects under the Administrative Procedure Act. The Court separately considered an equal protection claim brought by the Haitian plaintiffs and concluded they were unlikely to succeed on it, since the government had offered a race-neutral explanation for the termination.
The ruling significantly narrowed the legal grounds available to challenge TPS termination decisions generally, since most existing challenges, including the original Ethiopia case, relied on exactly the kind of procedural APA arguments the Court found barred. It did not hold that every constitutional claim is automatically foreclosed, which matters for what happened next.
What Happened to the Ethiopia Case After Mullin?
Litigation over Ethiopia’s TPS did not end with Mullin. In the weeks after the decision, Judge Murphy issued a new administrative stay while the court considered whether the plaintiffs could pursue constitutional claims that Mullin left open. In late July 2026, the First Circuit Court of Appeals granted the government’s request for summary reversal of that stay, finding that Mullin foreclosed the arguments it relied on, and remanded the case to the district court for further proceedings consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision. A similar stay covering South Sudan’s TPS designation was reversed by the same appeals panel around the same time.
That reversal is a real setback for the legal theory the original protection was built on. It is not necessarily the end of the case. In a closely related situation involving Somalia’s TPS designation, a different Massachusetts judge accepted an amended complaint built specifically around constitutional claims and issued a fresh stay days after the First Circuit ruling. Whether something similar happens, or has already happened, in the Ethiopia case is the central open question right now.
Is Your TPS Status Valid Right Now?
This is the honest answer: as of USCIS’s most recent published guidance, dated August 6, 2026, and directly verified on the agency’s SAVE program page, the agency continues to describe Ethiopian TPS beneficiaries as protected under the original court order, with Employment Authorization Documents extended through August 19, 2026. That guidance has not caught up to, or does not fully reflect, the First Circuit’s reversal of the stay it cites. We cannot tell you with certainty which of those two facts will control your specific situation without seeing the current docket. Because the litigation is changing quickly, Ethiopian TPS beneficiaries should confirm the current USCIS guidance and, where necessary, get advice about their individual circumstances before relying on any particular expiration date or court order. This is especially important for questions involving continued employment, international travel, or potential immigration enforcement.
Are Your Work Permits Still Valid?
Employment Authorization Documents issued under the Ethiopia TPS designation, in categories A12 or C19, have been repeatedly extended by court order since January 2026, and USCIS has updated the specific extended date on a rolling basis, moving from July 10 to July 17 to July 30 and now to August 19, 2026 across successive releases. Given that pattern and the pending appellate developments described above, we are deliberately not treating any single date as reliable in this article. Check the official USCIS Temporary Protected Status page for Ethiopia directly, since it is updated more often than a blog post can responsibly track.
What Happens If DHS Is Allowed to Proceed With the Termination?
If the courts ultimately side with the government and the termination is allowed to proceed, TPS-based protection from removal and TPS-based work authorization would end according to whatever effective date and implementation instructions DHS and USCIS announce at that point. What that means for any individual person depends on their broader circumstances: whether they hold another lawful status, have a different immigration benefit pending, are subject to an existing removal order, or have some other basis to remain in the United States. TPS ending does not automatically place every former beneficiary in the same legal position, and people in that situation may become subject to immigration enforcement or removal proceedings depending on those individual facts.
Should You Wait for the Case to Resolve, or Act Now?
Waiting is understandable, especially when the legal picture keeps shifting under you. But the safer approach is to use whatever protection currently exists to find out whether you have another path to lawful status, rather than waiting for a final answer that this litigation may not deliver quickly. Depending on individual immigration history, some TPS holders may have other potential avenues, such as family-based immigration, asylum or other humanitarian relief, or adjustment of status where the statutory requirements are met. None of those is automatic. Entry history, prior removal orders, admission or parole status, and other case-specific facts all matter, and an attorney can review your situation honestly rather than assume a general pathway applies to you.
What Can You Do to Protect Yourself Right Now?
A few practical steps make sense regardless of how the litigation resolves:
- Confirm your Employment Authorization Document’s current status directly with USCIS rather than relying on a fixed date from any outside source, including this article.
- Keep copies of the court orders and USCIS alerts relevant to your case, since your specific procedural posture may matter if your status is ever questioned.
- Ask an immigration attorney whether you have any other potential path to lawful status, and be honest about your full immigration history so the answer is accurate.
- If you plan to travel internationally, determine whether you need to apply for TPS travel authorization using Form I-131, Application for Travel Documents, Parole Documents, and Arrival/Departure Records, before you leave the United States. If USCIS approves the request, it will issue Form I-512T as evidence of that authorization. Do not depart without confirming you have the appropriate travel documentation, since departure and reentry can carry significant immigration consequences depending on your circumstances.
- Check the USCIS TPS Ethiopia webpage regularly. It has been updated roughly every one to three weeks throughout this litigation.
Common Questions About TPS Ethiopia in 2026
Do I need to re-register for TPS because of the litigation?
Do not file a TPS re-registration solely because of this litigation unless USCIS announces a new re-registration period or your attorney advises that a filing is appropriate for your situation. The 2024 extension required existing beneficiaries to re-register during a specific window, and that historical requirement still matters for your file. Continue monitoring USCIS’s Ethiopia TPS page for any new filing instructions.
What if I did not re-register, or my TPS application was denied, before this litigation started?
The court orders in this case do not automatically cure every prior filing or eligibility problem. The effect depends on your specific filing history, the reason TPS was not granted or maintained, and whether you fall within the group the applicable court order actually protects. Talk to an attorney about your specific history rather than assuming the litigation resolved an existing problem.
Does the litigation protect people with pending TPS applications, or only approved beneficiaries?
The court’s orders may protect certain people with pending Ethiopia TPS applications as well as approved beneficiaries, but the effect depends on individual circumstances and the exact scope of the applicable order at any given time. A pending application should not be treated as automatically equivalent to an approved grant of TPS.
Will Ethiopia’s TPS designation be extended or redesignated?
No new extension or redesignation has been announced. The immediate question is whether any court-ordered protection continues while the Ethiopia litigation proceeds under the substantially narrower framework Mullin v. Doe established. We are watching this closely and will update our guidance as the docket develops.
Contact an Experienced TPS Lawyer at Getachew & Ansari Immigration Attorneys, P.C.
Uncertainty about your immigration status affects every part of life, from whether you can safely visit family abroad to whether you can plan more than a few weeks ahead, let alone months. At Getachew & Ansari Immigration Attorneys, P.C., we understand that weight personally. Attorney Medya Ansari and her entire family came to the United States from Iran in 2004, and when her father was unable to return to the country because of the 2016 travel ban, her family lived through the same kind of uncertainty many Ethiopian TPS holders are facing right now.
Our firm serves clients in San Jose and throughout the Bay Area in English, Amharic, Spanish, Dari, and Farsi. If you want to understand exactly where your TPS status stands today, or whether you should be pursuing another path to lawful status as a precaution, call our team at 408-292-7995 or visit our contact page to schedule a consultation. Learn more about our firm before you call. You do not have to track this litigation on your own.
