The United States has temporarily ended legal protection for thousands of Ethiopian citizens, ordering them to leave the country within 60 days or face arrest and deportation.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem announced the decision on Friday and determined that the situation in Ethiopia “no longer poses a serious threat to the return of civilians” despite ongoing violence in parts of the country.
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The move affects about 5,000 refugees who have fled armed conflict and is the latest in a crackdown by the administration to strip legal protections from at least one million people in several countries.
The end of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Ethiopia will take effect in early February 2026, giving current beneficiaries two months to voluntarily leave or find another legal basis to remain in the United States. Those who force arrest officers will “never be allowed back,” according to a statement from Homeland Security.
The decision comes in spite of The State Department’s own travel advisory for Ethiopia, which urges Americans to “reconsider” travel to the country because of “sporadic violent conflict, civil unrest, crime, communications disruptions, terrorism and kidnappings.”
The advisory, still in effect, warns that many areas will remain off-limits and that the US embassy is “unlikely to be able to facilitate departures from the country if the security situation deteriorates”.
Federal officials justified the end by citing peace agreements signed in recent years, including a 2022 ceasefire in Tigray and a December 2024 agreement in Oromia. There are also analysts warned Threat of renewed fighting between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
The Federal Register notice acknowledged that “some sporadic and episodic violence occurs” but claimed that improvements in healthcare, food security and internal displacement statistics showed the country’s recovery.
However, the notice also cited national interests, including Ethiopian visa overstay rates exceeding 250 percent and unspecified national security checks involving some TPS holders.
The Ethiopian termination is part of a broader pattern under President Donald Trump, whose administration has moved to end protections for citizens of Haiti, Venezuela, Somalia, South Sudan and other countries since returning to office.
His administration has dismissed many nations as “Third World” countries, a term not widely used because of its pejorative evocation of developing nations.
Over the past two weeks, Trump has stepped up his inflammatory racist attacks on Minnesota’s large Somali community, specifically calling Somali immigrants “.garbage” and directing a wave of ICE agents into the state, intimidating and criticizing residents.
As of March 2025, an estimated 1.3 million people in the United States hold TPS, according to the American Immigration Council, a Washington-based research and advocacy organization.
In a document published this month, Trump identified immigration control as a centerpiece of his national security policy, describing immigration policies in Europe and elsewhere as part of what he describes as the far-right theory of “erasing civilization.”
This approach has been strongly criticized for racial selectivity. While ending protections for Ethiopians fleeing documented armed conflict, the administration simultaneously opened a refugee resettlement program for white South Africans of Afrikaner ethnicity, claiming “race-based discrimination.” This discrimination is rejected by the South African government and by numbers of Africans themselves.
Scott Lucas, professor of US and international politics at University College Dublin’s Clinton Institute, told Al Jazeera that the contradiction revealed a “distorted honesty” about the administration’s priorities.
“If you’re white and have connections, you get it,” he said. “If you’re not white, forget about it.”
As courts have temporarily blocked some decisions, legal challenges to many TPS terminations have mounted.
Ethiopian TPS beneficiaries can continue to work during the 60-day transition period, but after the deadline, anyone without an alternative legal status is subject to immediate arrest and removal.
Those who voluntarily leave using a mobile app to report their departure will be offered what the administration calls a “preferred airline ticket” and a “$1,000 exit bonus.”