The Trump administration is terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somalis living in the United States, giving hundreds of people two months to leave the country or face deportation.

The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said in a statement that conditions in the East African country had improved sufficiently and that Somalis no longer qualified for the designation under federal law.

“Temporary means temporary,” Noem wrote, adding that allowing Somali nationals to remain was “contrary to our national interests.

“We are putting Americans first,” she added.

Then Donald Trump said his administration was going to revoke the US citizenship of any naturalised immigrant from Somalia or any other country who is convicted of defrauding what he referred to as “our citizens.

The US president made the remarks in a wider speech at the Detroit Economic Club while on a trip to Michigan and did not go into further detail at the time. There is a high level of US citizenship by naturalisation among Somali American communities in Minnesota.

The Trump administration had first announced its intention to end protection for Somali nationals in November, with Trump writing on his Truth Social platform about Minnesota, which is home to a large Somali community:

“Somali gangs are terrorising the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from. It’s OVER!”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which advocates for fair treatment of Muslims in the US, on Tuesday, January 13, 2026, criticised the latest rollback of rights as a “bigoted attack” that will send some Somalis back to a war-torn, unstable nation.

“This decision does not reflect changed conditions in Somalia,” CAIR said in a statement released jointly with its Minnesota chapter. “By dismantling protections for one of the most vulnerable Black and Muslim communities, this decision exposes an agenda rooted in exclusion, not public safety.”

The administration has used Minnesota’s issues with fraud as a pretext to send a surge of immigration officers into the state. Trump has called Somalis “garbage” and referenced unverified reports, amplified by Republican lawmakers, suggesting the militant group al-Shabaab in Somalia benefited from fraud committed in Minnesota, though these claims have not been substantiated.

TPS is granted by the Department of Homeland Security to foreign nationals who cannot safely return to their home countries due to armed conflict, natural disasters or other extraordinary circumstances. The protection allows individuals to live and work legally in the US until conditions improve in their homeland.