March 26, 2026, New York – In a midnight filing, a group of Yemeni immigrants asked a court to prevent the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Yemen on May 4. A brief filed on their behalf requests an emergency order to spare them irreparable harm while their class action suit challenging the TPS termination proceeds. 

“As a mother and an educational researcher, I am living a harrowing struggle between my dream of securing my children’s future and a dire reality that threatens our very existence. Returning to Yemen amidst the ongoing conflict and militia control does not only mean losing personal safety; it means exposing my nine-year-old son to the grave risk of forced recruitment and systemic violence,” said plaintiff Hadeel Doe filing under a pseudonym for her safety, who is also carrying a high-risk pregnancy with severe medical complications that Yemen’s collapsed healthcare system could not treat.

The plaintiffs – seven Yemenis with TPS or pending applications – represent a class of 3,235. Among the plaintiffs are people who have had TPS for more than a decade. Absent court intervention, they may be forced to return to a country where a decade-long civil war exacerbated by foreign intervention has led to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Several would likely face persecution from the Houthi rebels. 

The U.S. government designated Yemen for TPS in 2015 and has renewed it six times. The country is in such turmoil that the U.S. State Department advises Americans not to set foot in it for any reason. Nonetheless, on March 3, Kristi Noem, then the Secretary of Homeland Security, announced the termination. DHS’s own document shows that it failed to follow the legally required process in favor of a pre-ordained decision to end TPS. Its notice even acknowledges that the “extraordinary and temporary conditions” making life unlivable in Yemen still exist. Termination, the notice claims, is nonetheless warranted by the “national interest,” a rationale never before used to end TPS in its 35-year history.

The termination is part of the administration’s systematic attack on TPS, which Noem has called a “scheme.” While taking numerous other steps to expel non-white, often Muslim, immigrants from the country, the administration has ended TPS designation for all 13 countries that have come up for review, stripping humanitarian protection from hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people. 

“DHS found that conditions don’t allow for safe return to Yemen, yet this administration still wants to force 3,000 people to go back to a country it cited as too dangerous for travel,” said Razeen Zaman, Immigrant Rights Director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF).

“These TPS holders fled a humanitarian crisis that has only worsened, and because of the discriminatory travel ban—once they’re sent back, there is no coming back. Ending TPS for Somalia, Burma, other countries, and now Yemen is part of the administration’s ongoing campaign to target and exclude nonwhite and Muslim people who don’t fit the limited image of America the administration wants.” 

Under the statute, the government may end TPS only when a country no longer meets the conditions for designation. In arbitrarily taking TPS away from Yemeni immigrants, the administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act, according to the class action suit. Further, it targeted people based on their ethnicity, religion, and nationality in violation of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. 

“Congress intended TPS designations to be based on objective factors–like the continuing civil war in Yemen, or the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe there – and not on whether the people protected by them are white enough to satisfy the racists currently occupying the White House. We expect the federal courts to reverse the termination of Yemeni TPS just as they have reversed numerous previous terminations for nonwhite countries,” said Shayana Kadidal, Senior Managing Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

For more information, see the case page. 

AALDEF is a national civil rights organization founded in 1974 to protect and promote the rights of Asian Americans. AALDEF serves diverse Asian communities around the country in solidarity with each other, communities of color, and marginalized groups. Community lawyering is at the heart of AALDEF’s work, which combines litigation, advocacy, education, and organizing to secure human rights for all people. Learn more at aaldef.org.

The Center for Constitutional Rights works with communities under threat to fight for justice and liberation through litigation, advocacy, and strategic communications. Since 1966, the Center for Constitutional Rights has taken on oppressive systems of power, including structural racism, gender oppression, economic inequity, and governmental overreach. Learn more at ccrjustice.org. Follow the Center for Constitutional Rights on social media: Center for Constitutional Rightson Facebook, @theCCRon Twitter, ccrjusticeon Instagram, and @ccrjustice.orgon Bluesky.