WASHINGTON — On Friday, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem announced that Temporary Protected Status (TPS) will be terminated for Syrian nationals enrolled in the program, effective Nov. 21, 2025.

Syrians have been enrolled in the TPS program — part of the Immigration Act of 1990 passed by Congress — since 2012, during the Obama administration. More than 6,000 Syrian nationals are currently enrolled.

The Secretary of Homeland Security has the power to designate a foreign country as TPS eligible if “conditions in the country that temporarily prevent the country’s nationals from returning safely, or in certain circumstances, where the country is unable to handle the return of its nationals adequately”, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website. The decision also follows the Trump administration’s revocation of TPS status for Venezuelan nationals, which was terminated last April.

“This is what restoring sanity to America’s immigration system looks like,” Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS assistant secretary of public affairs, said. “Conditions in Syria no longer prevent [Syrians] from returning home. Syria has been a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades, and it is contrary to our national interest to allow Syrians to remain in our country. TPS is meant to be temporary.”

The news release, which was published on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website on Sept. 19, noted that Syrians who choose to deport voluntarily within 60 days would be given a “complimentary plane ticket, a $1,000 exit bonus, and potential future opportunities for legal immigration.”

The move follows a comprehensive lifting of U.S. economic sanctions against Syria via executive order last June, following the fall of the dictator Bashar al-Assad after 24 years in power.

The announcement quickly garnered the attention of major U.S. and international media outlets.

Responses in Syria have varied. According to Anagha Subash Nair, a multimedia journalist based in Damascus, Syria who covers Syrian and Lebanese politics, both gratitude and resentment have been cornerstone to Syrians’ relationship to the U.S. and the West.“There’s a group of them who feel betrayed because the West interfered during the Assad regime, but didn’t do much … to militarily intervene,” she said. She also mentioned that the U.S. financial and military support for Israel has contributed to negative images of the West.

“[Others] feel very grateful to the West and Trump because he lifted the sanctions, at least on paper,” she added.

Nair said that while this complex sentiment remains, emigration to the West is still desirable for most Syrians.

“There’s a lot of nuance there,” she said. “Ultimately, life in the West is of better quality, [and] naturalizing into a Western country does give you more mobility. There are [many] factors to take into consideration,” she added.

Rose Habib, a Syrian undergraduate on an F1 visa attending Princeton University, echoed Nair’s assessment that the topic remains complex for many Syrians. Habib personally knew of two friends who were enrolled in the TPS program.

“Growing up, if anyone could go to the U.S., they definitely would do it,” she said. “At the same time, [if they can’t,] they just lived with that. There are definitely more things that are on people’s minds [than] American policy,” she said.

Habib, also a member of the Alawite ethnoreligious minority from Latakia, Syria, emphasized that Syrian sentiments on immigration are difficult to generalize precisely because of the nation’s volatile political history and diverse ethnic composition.

“When you say ‘Syrians’, there are many different ethnicities: Arabs, Kurds, whatever,” she said. “Before the fall of the Assad regime, everyone wanted to leave … now, [it’s more so] the minorities who are trying to leave.”

Habib mentioned the series of massacres against Alawite civilians that occurred last March, where armed remnants of the former Assad regime and Syrian National Army (SNA) militia killed more than 1,000 civilians in Western Syria. While Habib acknowledged that there is a group of Syrians who feel enthusiastic about settling back home, she says there still remains a large demand for emigrating to the West, especially from those who have experienced a threat of violence.

“Everyone I know who is part of a community that’s in danger, or was in danger for the past few months, [still] wants to leave [Syria],” she said. “They don’t want anything to do with the [new] government.”