The order will ensure that thousands of people from El Salvador, Sudan and Ukraine will not lose their work permits while their cases are pending.
Published July 21, 2026
A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from revoking work permits for tens of thousands of asylum seekers and immigrants with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), blocking a policy that was scheduled to go into effect as early as Wednesday.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton sided with immigrant rights groups and labor unions challenging a series of new U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) policies enforcing immigration restrictions passed by Congress last year.
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“The consequences facing plaintiffs are potentially serious,” he wrote in a five-page order. The order will remain in place while he considers whether to issue a long-term injunction, with a decision expected by Aug. 5.
The lawsuit, filed earlier this month by a coalition led by the legal group Democracy Forward, challenged a number of recent policy changes by Immigration and Immigration Services. These include a new policy allowing authorities to reject pending asylum applications and revoke work permits if applicants fail to pay a newly created annual asylum fee, as well as a decision to scrap a decades-old rule requiring first asylum work permit applications to be processed within 30 days. The lawsuit claimed that USCIS made the changes without public input, as required by law.
They also objected to the new rule’s retroactive application to people in El Salvador, Sudan, and Ukraine, who are still protected by TPS, which allows people from countries affected by war, natural disaster, or other major crisis to legally live and work in the United States until it is determined it is safe to return home.
“This decision will protect thousands of asylum seekers and TPS holders from immediate and irreparable harm while this case moves forward,” Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, said in a statement. “Without this relief, families who have followed the law and relied on years of humanitarian protection suddenly, through no fault of their own, faced the loss of employment authorization and the ability to support themselves.”
The ruling means thousands of TPS holders in El Salvador, Sudan and Ukraine will be able to continue working while legal challenges proceed.
A judge on Tuesday did not block the collection of asylum fees, but temporarily blocked the consequences of not paying them, including having an individual’s application rejected or their work permit revoked.
The controversial provision was introduced as part of President Trump’s signature tax and spending law, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by the Republican-controlled Congress in July 2025.
The Trump administration has made eliminating TPS protections a central part of its immigration policy, moving to strip people from more than a dozen countries of their status. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court authorized the administration to end protections for thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants.
USCIS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
