Public radio’s longest-running daily global news program.AboutContactDonateMeet the TeamPrivacyTerms of use©2026 The World from PRXPRX is a 501(c)(3) organization recognized by the IRS: #263347402.The origins of TPS and its uncertain futureThe Trump administration has stripped Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, from hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries from 13 countries. Sejal Zota, the co-founder of the legal support group Just Futures Law, talks with The World’s Host Marco Werman about the origins of the TPS program and the idea that the US should not send people back to countries where they cannot return safely. ImmigrationAugust 14, 2026Updated: August 14, 20267:48A Haitian worker with Temporary Protected Status cleans and busses tables at Half Shell Raw Bar in Key West, Fla., July 24, 2026.Since coming into office, the Trump administration has moved to terminate Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for people from 13 countries. That has hit home for hundreds of thousands of TPS beneficiaries who’ve been living and working legally in the US under the program.The terminations have sparked multiple lawsuits that are working their way through the courts but, so far, the administration has been allowed to proceed with ending the program for TPS holders from 11 countries, including Afghanistan, Haiti, South Sudan, and Venezuela.Patricia Grace Louis-Jacques, a nursing student who has close Haitian family members and friends affected by the end of TPS, poses for a photo outside the Caribbean Creole Café in Salisbury, Md., Aug. 2, 2026.Luis Andres Henao/APSejal Zota, a co-founder of the legal support group Just Futures Law, discussed the issue with The World’s Host Marco Werman. She traced the origins of TPS to 1960, when the Eisenhower administration first gave protection to Cubans via a program called Extended Voluntary Departure (EVD).“This whole development emerged as the US government was responding to the Cuban Revolution by offering protection to people who were fleeing Cuba,” Zota said. “From that point on, for the next almost 30 years, the attorney general would use this to provide protection to nationals of at least another 15 other countries so that they wouldn’t have to return to dangerous conditions, and it would shield the recipients from deportation, and it would make them eligible to work here, but without ever providing a permanent immigration status.”Only if one of three situations exist. The first is ongoing armed conflict that poses a serious threat to individual safety. The second is natural disasters that substantially, but temporarily, disrupt living conditions. And the last is other extraordinary or temporary conditions that prevent people from returning safely.So, they did that in 1990, and they wanted to make sure that there would be regularized procedures and that people would have some notice about what their rights are and what this process would be and, “How long am I going to be able to stay in the United States?” But certainly, a goal was that they wanted this program to reflect American humanitarian values. And I’m going to quote one of the congresspeople involved in the passage of TPS, Representative [Joe] Moakley.Anna Fischbein, right, hugs Csilla Simon, her case worker from Jewish Community Services of South Florida, while being interviewed in her apartment about the loss of a beloved Haitian home health care worker whose Temporary Protected Status expired, July 30, 2026, in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla.Rebecca Blackwell/APIn a number of lower court opinions, courts had postponed the termination of TPS for a number of countries, including Haiti and Syria. And so, the government appealed that, and the Supreme Court made two big findings. The first is that federal courts generally do not have the power to review most non-constitutional challenges to the government’s decision to end TPS, including whether the administration is following the correct process.This means that even if the Department of Homeland Security makes its decision by breaking the rules, for example, by flipping a coin, no one can sue the government and get a court to stop them. You really cannot hold them accountable through the courts for that sort of challenge. The other thing it held was that the Haiti plaintiffs were not likely to succeed on their claim that the government violated the equal protection guarantee in the Constitution. The plaintiffs in the Haiti case had argued that termination of TPS for Haiti was motivated by racial discrimination.The court did not deny that courts have the power to hear those kinds of claims, constitutional challenges, but the court found that the Haiti plaintiffs were not likely to succeed on their race discrimination claim because it found that the administration’s hostility was race-neutral and was not overtly based on race. Rather, it was a reflection of their views on immigration policy. And they said that in the face of many alarming and pejorative statements that people in this administration have made about Haitians specifically and about immigrants more broadly and about TPS holders.A Haitian worker with Temporary Protected Status, back center, exits the kitchen at Half Shell Raw Bar, July 24, 2026, in Key West, Fla.Rebecca Blackwell/APThis interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.