The Trump administration this week announced it will not renew Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somali nationals, so they must leave the U.S. by March 17, the expiration date for the extension the Biden administration granted. 

The decision, confirmed by White House and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials Jan. 13, follows through on President Donald Trump’s signaling in late 2025 that he would end TPS for certain groups as part of a broader effort to scale back humanitarian immigration programs. 

TPS allows nationals of designated countries to remain in the U.S. when conditions such as war or natural disaster make returning unsafe.

TPS for Somalia has been in place since 1991, when the country descended into civil war following the collapse of its central government. The designation has been renewed repeatedly by both Democratic and Republican administrations over more than three decades, most recently by the Biden administration in 2024.

In a statement announcing the change, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that conditions in Somalia have improved to the point that the country no longer meets the statutory requirements for TPS. 

“Temporary means temporary,” Noem said, adding that continuing the designation would be inconsistent with U.S. national interests and the administration’s priority of “putting Americans first.”

According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) estimates cited by Fox News, the decision affects 2,471 Somali nationals currently in the U.S. under TPS, including 1,383 whose applications are pending. The largest Somali-American community resides in Minnesota, where immigration enforcement has intensified amid fraud prosecutions within the community, as CatholicVote previously reported.

In a social media post shared by the DHS, Trump asked Minnesotans whether they wanted to live among “thousands of already convicted murderers, drug dealers and addicts, rapists,” as well as people from “foreign mental institutions and insane asylums.” He asserted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers were working to “remove them from your neighborhood and send them back,” blamed their presence on what he called former President Joe Biden’s “HORRIBLE Open Border’s Policy,” and warned that “the day of reckoning & retribution is coming.”

The administration’s messaging also drew attention online when the official DHS account posted an image of Trump captioned with the phrase “I am the captain now,” a reference to a scene from “Captain Phillips,” a 2013 film about the hijacking of a U.S. cargo ship by Somali pirates.

The President’s language toward the Somali community drew criticism from Catholic leaders in December 2025. When Trump referred to Somalis as “garbage,” Bishop Daniel Garcia, of Austin, Texas, and chair of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion of Racial Justice and Reconciliation, issued a statement condemning dehumanizing rhetoric directed at the Somali community. 

“Each child of God has value and dignity,” Bishop Garcia wrote, adding that “language that denigrates a person or community based on his or her ethnicity or country of origin is incompatible with this truth.” 

He called on public officials and community leaders to refrain from such language. 

Based on historical precedents from the first Trump administration, court challenges are likely. In previous years, attempts to terminate TPS for countries such as Honduras and Nepal were temporarily blocked by federal courts, allowing beneficiaries to remain while litigation proceeded.