Trump administration to end protections for thousands of Syrian migrants
Homeland Security has given Syrian nationals 60 days to leave the United States, after which they will be subject to arrest and deportation.
September 20, 2025
By: Grace Moon
The Trump administration announced Friday that it is terminating temporary protections for thousands of Syrian migrants in the United States, less than a year after rebels overthrew a decades-long dictatorship in Syria.
According to a Department of Homeland Security news release, Syrian nationals will have 60 days tovoluntarily depart the U.S., after which they will be subject to arrest and deportation. “Conditions in Syria no longer prevent their nationals from returning home,” DHS Assistant SecretaryTricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “Syria has been a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearlytwo decades.”
In his second term, President Donald Trump has aggressively sought to remove unauthorized immigrants, including by revoking protections for those under the temporary protected status program, or TPS.
Congress created TPS in 1990 to shield immigrants from deportation if their countries experiencedextraordinary crises, such as armed conflict or natural disasters. According to DHS estimates, there aremore than 6,000 Syrians with TPS designations, which allow people to live and work legally in thecountry but do not offer a path to permanent residency or citizenship.
Syria was first designated for TPS in 2012, when the country was embroiled in a violent civil war, and has since been re-designated three times. The latest DHS announcement comes less than a year after the collapse of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s regime, whose family had ruled the country with an iron fist for 54 years.
Since 2024, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has reported an increase in spontaneous returns to Syria — a trend expected to continue this year. Despite the returns, more than 90 percent of Syrians continue to live below the poverty line and more than half of the prewar population remains displaced, according to the UNHCR.
Mai El-Sadany, executive director of the Washington-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, said the latest decision is “deeply premature.”
“While the fall of the Assad regime is a significant development in Syria and will eventually allow a greater number of returns, the reality is that a country that underwent 14 years of harrowing conflict and 54 years of dictatorship needs time to stabilize,” El-Sadany said in an email to The Washington Post.
“Many Syrians outside of Syria no longer have a home to return to,” Maya Atassi, the executive director of the Syrian Community Network, said in an email. “The jobs that were their livelihood may no longer exist, the health infrastructure has been diminished and their children are at risk of being unable to access quality education.”
In addition to Syria, tens of thousands of migrants are grappling with the possibility of losing their legal status, including 50,000 Hondurans and Nicaraguans who have lived in the U.S. for decades, as The Post previously reported.
On Friday, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to pause a federal judge’s order that ruled the administration broke the law by stripping protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants — the largest group to have received TPS.