From the official announcement by USCIS ↗
According to a July 2026 update from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for Syrian citizens has not officially ended, despite former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem determining that conditions in Syria no longer warrant continued protection under this program. The termination notice was published in the Federal Register on September 22, 2025 and was set to take effect on November 21, 2025. However, just two days before that deadline, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York issued an order halting the termination in the case Dahlia Doe v. Noem, requiring USCIS to continue recognizing the validity of Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) already issued to Syrians under TPS.
On the I-9 form that employers use to verify work eligibility, USCIS instructed employers to write "as per court order" in Section 1 and July 10, 2026 as the temporary expiration date in Section 2; the E-Verify system is using the same date. This is a limited extension measure pending lower courts' adjustments in accordance with the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Mullin v. Doe issued on June 25, 2026.
A similar mechanism is being applied to Haiti: according to USCIS official documentation, EADs issued under Haiti's TPS designation — including EADs that expired years ago — are extended in validity per court order in the case Miot v. Trump, with the temporary expiration date on I-9 and E-Verify set as July 24, 2026. The directly affected populations include approximately 6,100 Syrians currently holding TPS and over 350,000 Haitians, mostly workers, small business owners, and families with children in school in the United States — not the Vietnamese-American community, but facing the same legal uncertainty that many other immigrant groups, including Vietnamese refugees in the past, have experienced.
In practice, TPS holders from Syria or Haiti with EADs on the above expiration date list remain considered to have legal work authorization until the new temporary deadline, but this is not a permanent extension — the status could change at any time depending on developments in lower courts. See USCIS's official notice at the source link below.
This is a limited extension, not a resolution of the legal dispute over TPS.
Analysis
The Syria case is one thread in a broader legal battle over the Department of Homeland Security's authority to terminate TPS. The U.S. Supreme Court, by a 6-3 majority in June 2026, allowed the government to end TPS for approximately 348,000 Venezuelans, overturning a block issued by a federal judge in San Francisco; Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole dissenting voice. Similar developments are expected to apply to Syria and Haiti. In Congress, reactions have been mixed: the House passed legislation in April to extend TPS for Haitians for an additional three years, sponsored by Senator Angus King in the upper chamber, showing that political pressure continues to exist alongside court decisions.
Diaspora Impact
This policy applies specifically to Syrian and Haitian citizens under TPS and is not directly related to the Vietnamese-American community. Readers need not take any action at this time. Anyone with relatives, colleagues, or employees from these two nationalities should advise them to keep their old EAD and monitor uscis.gov for accurate temporary expiration dates, avoiding unofficial intermediary services. Small business owners employing TPS workers should follow correct instructions for completing the I-9 form and E-Verify to avoid violating employment law when verifying work eligibility.