U.S. Court halts Trump administration move to revoke immigrant work permits

A U.S. court has blocked Trump administration's effort to cancel work permits for some immigrants and assylum seekers, preventing the policy from taking effect while legal challenges continue.

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked U.S. President's plan from stripping tens of thousands of asylum seekers and immigrants who have Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of their ability to work in the United States.

The decision came after the U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton in Boston sided with a ‌coalition of immigrant rights groups and labor unions that sued to block U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services from moving forward with a series of policies designed to implement new immigration-related restrictions enacted by Congress last year.

Trump's signature tax and spending law that was passed by the Republican-led Congress in July 2025 for the first time imposed fees to apply for asylum and restricted employment authorization for people with Temporary Protected Status, or TPS.

The Trump administration has sought as part of the Republican president's hardline immigration agenda to end TPS for people from more than a dozen countries. 

The U.S. Supreme Court last month allowed it to do so in the case of thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants.

The plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by the liberal legal group Democracy Forward argued that USCIS had unlawfully implemented the new law's provisions and that its policies needed to be halted, particularly one that would lead to thousands of TPS holders from ‌El Salvador, Sudan and Ukraine potentially losing their ability to work starting on Wednesday.