Yes, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay on a lower court ruling that vacated DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s terminations of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations for Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua.
The plaintiffs argued “statutory and constitutional challenges to those termination decisions.”
The district court ruled that Noem’s termination violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
The 9th Circuit disagreed (I omitted the citations):
In 8 U.S.C. § 1254a(b)(5)(A), Congress precluded “judicial review of any determination of the [Secretary] with respect to the designation, termination, or extension of a designation, of a foreign state” under section 1254a(b). The government argues that the Secretary’s terminations of TPS for Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua are therefore unreviewable. In our recent decision in National TPS Alliance v. Noem (NTPSA III), we held that section 1254a(b)(5)(A) “does not bar judicial review of a claim that the Secretary exceeded her statutory authority.” No. 25-5724, 2026 WL 226573, at *9 (9th Cir. Jan. 28, 2026). But that case involved the vacatur of a TPS designation, an action that we held was in excess of the Secretary’s statutory authority. Id. at *15–16. This case, by contrast, involves a termination of TPS, an action expressly authorized by statute. At this preliminary stage, we conclude that the government has shown a likelihood of prevailing in its argument that the Secretary’s action is unreviewable because it is a “determination . . . with respect to the . . . termination . . . of a designation[] of a foreign state.”
In other words, Noem is allowed to terminate TPS protections, not vacate them.
The 9th Circuit also found that Noem’s “decision-making process” did not satisfy the arbitrary and capricious argument:
Specifically, the government can likely show that the administrative record adequately supports the Secretary’s action, that the TPS statute does not require the Secretary to consider intervening country conditions arising after the events that led to the initial TPS designation, and that the Secretary’s decision not to consider intervening conditions does not amount to an unexplained change in policy. See FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., 556 U.S. 502, 514–15 (2009). The government also can likely show that the Secretary consulted with appropriate agencies, see 8 U.S.C. § 1254a(b)(3)(A), adequately considered conditions in Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua, and gave facially legitimate reasons for why terminating TPS for each country was warranted.
Noem ended the protections on July 8, 2025.
“TPS was never designed to be permanent, yet previous administrations have used it as a de facto amnesty program for decades,” Noem wrote on X. “Given the improved situation in each of these countries, we are wisely concluding what was intended to be a temporary designation.”
Honduras and Nicaragua received TPS on January 5, 1999, due to Hurricane Mitch. Noem explained why the conditions no longer meet TPS requirements, including that both countries have improved over the decades.
Nepal was granted TPS on June 24, 2015, following a devastating earthquake. Noem determined “there are notable improvements in environmental disaster preparedness and response capacity, as well as substantial reconstruction from the earthquake’s destruction such that there is no longer a disruption of living conditions and Nepal is able to handle adequately the return of its nationals.”
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