The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals — not exactly known as friendly territory for conservative policy — handed the Trump administration a significant legal victory this week, granting a stay of a lower court order that had blocked the end of Temporary Protected Status for migrants from Honduras, Nicaragua, and Nepal.
The ruling clears the path for the administration to proceed with terminating TPS for approximately 60,000 migrants who hold no other immigration status in the United States. The case, National TPS Alliance v. Noem, had been one of several legal battles waged to keep the decades-old designations alive indefinitely.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem didn't mince words:
"A win for the rule of law and vindication for the US Constitution. Under the previous administration, Temporary Protected Status was abused to allow violent terrorists, criminals, and national security threats into our nation."
The word "temporary" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in Temporary Protected Status. Honduras and Nicaragua were first designated for TPS in 1999, following a hurricane. Nepal received its designation in 2015 after an earthquake. That means Honduran and Nicaraguan TPS holders have been living under "temporary" protection for over a quarter century.
A hurricane hit. Clinton granted temporary relief. Then Bush extended it. Then Obama extended it. Then Trump tried to end it. Then Biden not only extended it but expanded the entire program to the highest levels in its history, ensuring over a million migrants became eligible. Nearly every president since Clinton has routinely extended TPS and designated new countries — turning an emergency measure into a conveyor belt for indefinite residency.
As Breitbart News reported, Noem framed it plainly:
"TPS was never designed to be permanent, yet previous administrations have used it as a de facto amnesty program for decades. Given the improved situation in each of these countries, we are wisely concluding what was intended to be a temporary designation."
She's right on the structural point, whatever one thinks of the individual cases. Congress designed TPS as a short-term shield — a way to pause deportations when a country was in acute crisis. It was never meant to create a parallel immigration system where "temporary" meant "until someone has the political will to say no."
The scale of what the Biden administration did with TPS deserves its own reckoning. Over a million migrants became eligible under Biden's watch — a staggering expansion of a program that was already being stretched well past its statutory intent. That wasn't emergency management. That was immigration policy conducted through the back door, bypassing the legislative process entirely.
This is the pattern that conservatives have identified for years: a program is created with narrow, sympathetic parameters. It gets extended once, twice, a dozen times. Each extension creates a larger constituency that makes termination politically harder. Eventually, the "temporary" designation calcifies into something indistinguishable from permanent residency — and anyone who suggests winding it down gets accused of cruelty.
It's a ratchet that only turns one direction. Until now.
The fact that this stay came from the Ninth Circuit matters. This is the appellate court that immigration activists have long treated as a reliable backstop against enforcement. For years, the circuit served as the preferred venue for challenges to border security measures, deportation orders, and asylum restrictions.
The Ninth Circuit concluded the administration's position was strong enough to warrant staying the lower court's injunction, which signals something important about the legal merits. Courts grant stays when they believe the party seeking one is likely to succeed and that irreparable harm would result from leaving the lower court's order in place. The Trump administration cleared that bar in the Ninth Circuit.
That alone tells you where the legal winds are blowing on TPS termination.
The approximately 60,000 migrants affected by this ruling now face the reality that "temporary" may finally mean temporary. The legal battle in National TPS Alliance v. Noem isn't over — stays are procedural steps, not final rulings — but the trajectory is clear. The administration has momentum, the appellate court's action suggests the legal foundation is sound, and DHS is moving forward.
The broader question is whether this becomes a template. TPS designations remain in effect for numerous other countries, many with their own long histories of routine extension. If the administration succeeds in unwinding the Honduras, Nicaragua, and Nepal designations, the precedent will be difficult to contain.
For twenty-six years, Washington treated "temporary" as a word with no expiration date. The Ninth Circuit just put one back on the calendar.
