The ruling follows a Supreme Court decision limiting court review of temporary protected status terminations.
A federal judge on Friday permitted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to end temporary protected status (TPS) for nearly 4,000 people from Burma, also known as Myanmar, ending their protection from deportation and authorization to work in the United States.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly of the Northern District of Illinois approved the action after the Supreme Court ruled in June in Mullin v. Doe, which held that the TPS statute generally bars courts from reviewing non-constitutional challenges to DHS decisions to end TPS designations.
The Burma TPS designation, granted for the first time in 2021 after a military coup and later extended, had been originally set to expire in January. Court orders had maintained the protections, while a class-action lawsuit challenged the termination.
Those protections are no longer in effect, and employment authorization documents issued under the Burma TPS category are no longer valid.
The lawsuit contended that the November 2025 termination notice failed to account for conditions on the ground in the country as dictated by statute and was just one aspect of an overarching campaign of ending TPS designations.
“I am devastated by the court’s ruling and terrified of what will happen if I’m forced to return to Burma,” one of the plaintiffs stated in a statement released by the International Refugee Assistance Project, which represents the class of impacted refugees along with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Law Offices of June J. Htun.
Many people affected by the rule change have lived and worked in the United States since fleeing Burma following a coup in 2021. Some have raised U.S. citizen children while armed conflict continued in their home country.
In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, plaintiffs made novel claims, including questions regarding the secretary’s authority and allegations of discrimination. Kennelly allowed the case to proceed on the discrimination claim, while also permitting the termination to go into effect.
