Trump Administration Will End Deportation Protections for Thousands of Syrians

The Trump administration will terminate deportation protections for thousands of migrants from Syria, homeland security officials said on Friday.

About 6,000 Syrians are authorized to live and work in the United States through the program, known as Temporary Protected Status, which is meant to help migrants who cannot return to their countries because of unsafe conditions. About 1,000 more Syrians also had pending applications to join the program as of August, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

“This is what restoring sanity to America’s immigration system looks like,” Tricia McLaughlin, the department’s assistant secretary for public affairs, said in a statement. “Conditions in Syria no longer prevent their nationals from returning home. Syria has been a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades, and it is contrary to our national interest to allow Syrians to remain in our country. T.P.S. is meant to be temporary.”

Some immigration policy experts criticized the decision, saying that conditions in Syria were still unstable and that Syrians did not pose major terrorism risks. After more than a decade of civil war, rebels ended the Assad family’s brutal rule in Syria late last year. Although Syria’s new leaders have sought to move away from dictatorship, concerns over sectarian conflict and violence remain.

Amanda Baran, the former head of policy for Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Biden administration, said the decision to end the program was “gutting for the thousands of Syrians here with T.P.S. and the communities in which they live.”

“Conditions in Syria remain dangerous and unstable, clearly warranting an extension under the law,” Ms. Baran said. “This administration’s disregard for the expertise of human rights experts is having real, dire consequences on the lives of everyday people as demonstrated by this reckless decision.”

Syrians with T.P.S. will have 60 days to voluntarily leave the country before they are subject to arrest and deportation, department officials said. The program, which was first authorized for Syrians in 2012 and extended several times, was slated to end on Sept. 30 after receiving an extension from the Biden administration.

The Obama administration first authorized the protections because of the civil warfare in Syria. In a statement announcing the designation, Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary at the time, said Syrians in the United States “would face serious threats to their personal safety” if they were forced to return home. She also said applicants would undergo full background checks to gain approval for T.P.S.

The end of the T.P.S. program is the latest effort by the Homeland Security Department to terminate deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants who had been authorized to temporarily live and work in the United States. The administration has also moved to end the status for people from countries including Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Cameroon and Afghanistan.

The actions are part of the Trump administration’s broader initiative to ramp up deportations and crack down on immigration. The administration has also moved to end other programs that temporarily authorized hundreds of thousands of migrants to live and work in the country lawfully, including a Biden-era program that granted protections to people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Administration officials have said the protections were always meant to be temporary and that conditions in certain countries have improved, making it safe for migrants to return home.

The protections for Syrians have been extended multiple times. During President Trump’s first term, his administration extended the designation twice, though it excluded migrants who came to live in the United States after Aug. 1, 2016. Administration officials said at the time that the ongoing armed conflict in Syria had justified allowing Syrians to remain in the country.

The Biden administration extended the program three times. It also opened up the program to more people, allowing Syrians who had been living in the United States since Jan. 25, 2024, to apply for T.P.S.

Some of the Trump administration’s efforts to end deportation protections have been met with legal challenges. After the administration tried to terminate temporary protections for Haitians by September, for example, a federal judge blocked it from doing so until at least next year. Before he left office, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. extended those protections through February 2026.