Two U.S. federal judges have cleared the way for the Trump administration to end temporary deportation protections for thousands of people from South Sudan and Myanmar.
The rulings on Friday rejected attempts by immigrant-rights groups to keep the protections in place. The decisions came after the U.S. Supreme Court gave the administration greater room to end similar protections for migrants from Haiti and Syria.
The cases were heard in Boston and Chicago, where judges Patti Saris and Matthew Kennelly had previously blocked the administration from ending the protections.
Lawyers for immigrant rights returned to court with a new argument after the Supreme Court's June ruling. They said the Department of Homeland Security did not have the legal authority to terminate the protections.
Saris rejected that argument in a ruling on Friday morning. She said accepting it could also cast doubt on the department's longstanding authority to extend the protections.
Kennelly reached a similar conclusion several hours later in the case involving Myanmar.
Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, allows eligible people from countries affected by war, natural disasters or other exceptional circumstances to remain temporarily in the United States. It also allows them to work legally.
The Trump administration moved in November to end TPS for South Sudan and Myanmar.
South Sudan has held the designation since 2011, while Myanmar has remained under political turmoil since the military seized power in a 2021 coup.
The changes could affect about 232 South Sudanese nationals and around 4,000 people from Myanmar.
The latest decisions follow a June Supreme Court ruling that limited the ability of lower courts to intervene in the administration's efforts to end TPS protections.
The ruling, backed by the court's conservative majority, has made it harder for immigrant-rights groups to challenge the government's decisions through lower courts.
James Percival, the Department of Homeland Security's general counsel, welcomed Friday's rulings.
He said the decisions meant that court blocks remained in place only for the administration's efforts to end TPS for Ethiopia and Somalia.
"Every day these 'administrative stays' are in effect is a day the American people are denied what they voted for," Percival said on X.
The rulings mark another step in the administration's wider effort to roll back temporary immigration protections for people from countries facing conflict and instability.
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