The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit handed President Donald Trump a significant legal and political victory earlier in the week, granting an emergency stay that allows his administration to move forward with terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for nationals of Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua while its appeal proceeds.
The February 9 ruling pauses a December 31 district court decision that had blocked the terminations as unlawful, immediately restoring the administration’s authority to unwind protections that have remained in place for decades.
In a unanimous order, a three-judge panel—Judges Michael Hawkins, Consuelo Callahan, and Eric Miller—concluded the government is likely to succeed on appeal. The panel found the administration could prevail either because the lower court lacked jurisdiction under limits in the TPS statute or because the decisions by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem were not arbitrary or capricious.
“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,” the court wrote.
The panel added: “The government also can likely show that the secretary consulted with appropriate agencies, adequately considered conditions in Nepal, Honduras and Nicaragua, and gave facially legitimate reasons for why terminating TPS for each country was warranted.”
The court pointed to recent Supreme Court emergency stays in similar TPS cases involving Venezuelan nationals, noting that while those orders lacked detailed reasoning, they offered guidance on balancing harms when the government seeks to enforce immigration policy during ongoing litigation.
TPS designations for Honduras and Nicaragua date back to 1999, following Hurricane Mitch, while Nepal’s designation followed a devastating 2015 earthquake. The Trump administration has argued that conditions in those countries have sufficiently improved and that TPS was never intended to function as a permanent immigration program.
The decision reverses, at least temporarily, a sweeping ruling by U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson, who had described Noem’s actions as “preordained” and unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act. Thompson had also cited alleged racial animus, pointing to public statements by Noem and Trump that she said portrayed TPS holders as criminals or invaders.
The administration appealed that ruling in early January, arguing it suffered irreparable harm from being blocked from carrying out core immigration policies.
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