Somalia's Temporary Protected Status holders got their work permits pushed back for roughly the fifth time since mid-July on August 5, when U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services quietly moved the goalposts again, from August 5 to August 10 — today. It looks like the same bureaucratic churn that's defined this case since June. It isn't. Two weeks ago, Somalia was one of five countries still fighting TPS terminations in court. As of this week, it's down to two, and the other one — Ethiopia — is barely holding on.
A Program That's Nearly Empty
The Supreme Court's June 25 ruling in Mullin v. Doe didn't just cost Haiti and Syria their protections. It set off a chain reaction that, in the six weeks since, has emptied out nearly every other country's TPS docket too. Yemen's designation ended July 20. Burma and South Sudan both went down on August 7 — three days before this story published — after appeals judges threw out the lower-court orders that had been shielding them. Add in Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua, Nepal, Afghanistan and Cameroon, all terminated earlier, and what's left standing is just Somalia and a shakier-by-the-day Ethiopia.
That makes Somalia's case less a footnote and more the last real test of how far the Mullin precedent reaches — and this week, a Boston judge answered that question in a way nobody expected.
The Case Nobody Saw Coming Back
Somalia's TPS designation was due to lapse March 17, 2026. Four days earlier, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston put the termination on hold while a suit brought by African Communities Together and several individual TPS holders played out. DHS's own guidance calls the pause something it "vehemently disagrees" with, adding that the department has already beaten similar challenges twice at the Supreme Court.
That case sat mostly dormant while the justices worked through the Haiti and Syria dispute. Once Mullin came down in the government's favor on June 25, Judge Burroughs extended her pause again on July 2 to let both sides file additional arguments, setting a schedule that wasn't due to wrap until August 20.
Then, in late July, the ground shifted. The First Circuit reversed nearly identical stays protecting Ethiopia and South Sudan, and DHS pushed Burroughs to follow suit and let Somalia's termination proceed. She declined — and when DHS's general counsel, James Percival, criticized her scheduling as deliberately slow on social media, Burroughs used an order to call the administration's stance toward Somali TPS holders "shameful cruelty." Days later, plaintiffs filed an amended complaint built around a different legal theory entirely: that ending Somalia's TPS violates Fifth Amendment due-process and equal-protection guarantees — the kind of constitutional claim Mullin left open, unlike the statutory arguments the ruling shut down. Burroughs granted a fresh stay, calling the termination "void" for now while she weighs whether those claims can hold up. The fallout reached Congress: a House Republican filed a resolution to impeach her over it.
How Small the Stakes Actually Are, Numerically
For all the legal fireworks, the underlying program is tiny. DHS's own termination filing put approved Somali TPS holders at roughly 1,082, with another 1,383 applications pending as of last December. A separate government tally cited by the National Immigration Forum, drawn from earlier 2025 data, puts approved beneficiaries closer to 705 — a reminder that TPS caseload figures shift depending on when the government's own snapshot was taken, not necessarily because the numbers disagree. Either way, Somalia is nowhere close to the roughly 1.3 million people the Congressional Research Service says have held TPS status across 17 countries.
The Ruling That Did the Damage
Mullin v. Doe combined a Syrian TPS challenge with Trump v. Miot, a parallel Haitian case, into one decision. On June 25, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that courts generally can't second-guess a Homeland Security secretary's call to end a TPS designation, and separately rejected the argument that Haiti's termination was motivated by racial bias. The ruling didn't instantly strip anyone of status — the cases went back to district courts to formalize the terminations — but Haiti's roughly 350,000 beneficiaries and Syria's roughly 6,000 lost protection effective July 27.
The decision didn't rule on Somalia, Ethiopia or anyone else directly. What it did was gut the legal theories those cases had been relying on, and DHS has cited it in nearly every filing since to argue the remaining cases should fall the same way. Somalia's pivot to constitutional claims is, in effect, an attempt to find the one door Mullin left unlocked.
Where TPS Has Already Ended
The list has grown considerably since this story was first drafted:
- Venezuela — Both the 2023 and 2021 designations are terminated. The Supreme Court let the 2023 termination take effect in October 2025; the 2021 termination followed that November. A narrow carve-out keeps some work permits valid through October 2, 2026.
- Haiti — Ended July 27, 2026, affecting roughly 350,000 people.
- Syria — Ended the same day, affecting roughly 6,000 people.
- Yemen — Terminated effective July 20, 2026, after a New York federal court lifted its own stay.
- Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua — Terminations, first blocked and then reinstated by the Ninth Circuit in February, remain in force, affecting roughly 72,000, 12,700 and 4,000 people respectively.
- Afghanistan and Cameroon — Ended in the summer of 2025, affecting more than 17,000 people combined; related lawsuits continue even though the terminations themselves stand.
- Burma (Myanmar) and South Sudan — Both terminated August 7, 2026 , after the First Circuit threw out the lower-court stays protecting them. South Sudan's case, decided by Judge Patti Saris — not the judge handling Somalia's case — involved a much smaller group: roughly 232 approved beneficiaries and 73 pending applicants.
The Two Left Standing
Only two designations are still being fought over in court:
- Somalia , protected for now by Judge Burroughs's newly issued constitutional-claims stay, with EAD paperwork on a rolling placeholder currently set at August 10 — an administrative bookkeeping date, not the actual legal cutoff, since the court order is what really controls.
- Ethiopia , whose earlier stay was wiped out by the same July 29 appeals ruling that doomed South Sudan. USCIS is treating its EAD validity as extended "per court order" only through August 19 while the termination moves toward being formalized — a far shakier position than an active judicial block.
Neither protection comes with a guaranteed expiration date on the relief itself. Both last only as long as a judge keeps intervening, and USCIS has been updating placeholder dates for each of them on a near-weekly basis.
Not Yet Targeted, Not Fully Safe Either
El Salvador (valid through September 9, 2026), Ukraine and Sudan (through October 19, 2026) and Lebanon (through November 27, 2026) have no termination notice pending and sit outside the Mullin fallout — for now. But on August 5, a Massachusetts federal court declined to block a separate policy tied to a one-year cap on TPS work permits under last year's tax-and-spending law, which is already shortening how long El Salvador, Ukraine and Sudan beneficiaries can actually work — regardless of whether their underlying designation survives. A valid TPS status, in other words, no longer guarantees a valid work permit.
What This Means for Mixed-Status Households
For Latino immigrant families juggling different statuses under one roof — common in households with members from Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua or Haiti — a few practical points from current guidance are worth underlining. An expired-looking EAD isn't necessarily invalid: cards tied to litigation-paused countries carry instructions for employees to write "as per court order" on Form I-9, while employers log the current placeholder date separately. Because those placeholder dates keep moving, USCIS is telling both sides to check its guidance pages directly rather than trust a printed card. And because eligibility now hinges on the exact EAD category and original expiration date involved, an immigration attorney — not general news coverage — remains the safest way to confirm any individual case.
The bigger picture is what should worry Latino communities regardless of which country leads the news this week: a Supreme Court ruling aimed at Haiti and Syria became the tool DHS used to dismantle protections for Yemen, Burma and South Sudan within six weeks. The same one-year work-permit cap now squeezing Salvadoran and Sudanese workers could just as easily reach whoever's left. Somalia bought itself more time by finding a constitutional argument Mullin didn't foreclose. Whether that argument actually survives the next round in Judge Burroughs's courtroom is the only real suspense left in this story.
