Tipsheet

Trump Terminates Protected Status for Yemeni Migrants After Scoring Major Court Victory

Joseph Chalfant
Joseph Chalfant  |  February 13, 2026 3:00 PM

The Trump administration has moved to end Temporary Protected Status for Yemen just days after a major court victory allowing the Department of Homeland Security to strip the designation from Honduras, Nicaragua, and Nepal.

Around 3,000 Yemeni migrants are currently in the United States under the TPS designation, making them eligible for deportation after the status expires in 60 days. The Trump administration’s decision will almost certainly face a legal challenge, as numerous lifts of the designation have been brought to court.

The Trump administration has regularly been blocked from lifting these sometimes decades-old “temporary” designations by activist judges who have gone as far as to claim that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to remove these longstanding designations was due to her racial bias.

Noem has argued that these “temporary” designations are not actually temporary at all, but are de facto amnesties for third-world countries to gain residence within the United States utilized by previous administrations.

As with previous cases, Noem has argued that the situation in Yemen has stabilized to the point where a TPS designation is no longer applicable, and the United States retaining Yemeni migrants would be “contrary to our national interest.”

The government has encouraged Yemenis to take advantage of Homeland Security’s self-deportation program, which provides individuals with $2,600 and a complementary plane ride to their home country.