National TPS Alliance v. Noem (NTPSA II)

National TPS Alliance v. Noem (NTPSA II) is a legal challenge to the Trump administration’s unlawful efforts to dismantle the statutorily mandated Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program, which provides humanitarian protection for people who cannot safely return to their home countries.  

The Trump administration’s illegal terminations of TPS for Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua intend to strip TPS status from more than 60,000 TPS holders. All have lived in the United States with legal status for at least a decade, most for more than 25 years. This devastating loss of work authorization and protection from deportation and detention will cause irreparable injury to the TPS holders themselves, as well as their families, communities, and local economies.  

In terminating TPS designations for Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua, President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem pre-determined that TPS would be terminated for these three countries and worked backwards to search for a rationale to support that end result.  

The suit argues that DHS violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to follow the necessary rules for reviewing TPS designations. The suit also challenges the terminations as motivated by racial animus. Acting, even in part, on such racial animus is a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment guarantee of equal protection.  

TPS is a program created by Congress to protect individuals who cannot safely return to their home country due to war, natural disaster, or another emergency. Hundreds of thousands of TPS holders are permitted to live and work in the United States for statutorily defined periods pursuant to this statute. TPS holders are mothers, fathers, workers, and contributing members of our community. They have legal status and cannot safely return to their home countries.  

In establishing the TPS program, Congress carefully laid out a framework for periodic review of TPS designations. Congress aimed to ground the process in a careful review of facts, and to insulate these weighty decisions from opaque executive discretion and political whims. Secretary Noem’s decisions, challenged here, turn this process on its head. 

On July 7, 2025, the National TPS Alliance and seven individual TPS holders sued DHS to challenge the terminations of TPS for Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua. This is the second case brought during the second Trump administration. Previously, we challenged the vacatur and termination of TPS for Venezuela and Haiti. For more about that case, please visit this case page: National TPS Alliance v. Noem | ACLU of Northern CA. Both cases follow from Ramos v. Nielsen, a case challenging the termination of TPS for six countries during the first Trump administration.

The legal teams in both cases are the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), the ACLU Foundations of Northern California and Southern California, the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) at UCLA School of Law, and the Haitian Bridge Alliance.