Temporary Protected Status work authorization has entered an unusual holding pattern. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 25, 2026 decision in Mullin v. Doe — which allowed the administration to proceed with terminating the Haiti and Syria designations — USCIS has been extending employment authorization document validity for the remaining affected countries in increments of days, not months, while lower courts work through what the ruling means for other designations.
Three designations have already ended. Yemen TPS terminated effective July 20, 2026, and Haiti and Syria terminated effective July 27, 2026. A12 and C19 employment authorization documents issued under those three designations are no longer valid. Workers in those categories and the employers who rely on them are past the point of extension.
For the countries still in litigation, the dates have moved repeatedly. In early July, USCIS set a common expiration of July 17 for Burma, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, with Haiti at July 24. By late July those had been pushed again — Somalia to July 29, Ethiopia and South Sudan to July 30 — and then further, with Burma and Somalia extended through August 3, 2026 and Ethiopia and South Sudan through August 6, 2026. Fragomen’s August 3 alerts report additional short extensions moving Somalia to August 5 and Burma to August 7. These are court-ordered placeholder dates, not policy judgments, and they have changed roughly weekly.
The practical problem this creates is I-9 compliance. An employer verifying or reverifying work authorization has to know which date is currently operative for a given employee’s country, and that date may have changed since the last time anyone checked. Employees, for their part, may hold a physical EAD whose printed expiration date bears no relationship to the date actually controlling — the card’s face date is not the operative date when a court order has overridden it.
Anyone affected should check the country-specific date on the day it matters rather than relying on a memo from the prior week, and should keep documentation of the controlling court order or USCIS notice. Employers should avoid taking adverse action based on a lapsed placeholder date without first confirming whether another extension has issued. Until the underlying litigation resolves, this pattern of days-long extensions is likely to continue.
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