Judge Dale E. Ho of the Southern District of New York issued an emergency order extending protections that were due to expire on Monday, allowing Yemeni nationals to remain in the United States while a broader legal challenge proceeds.

TPS allows foreign nationals from countries facing war, natural disasters or extraordinary conditions to stay in the United States temporarily, shielding them from deportation and granting work and travel authorization.In his 36-page ruling, Ho said Congress had established a clear legal framework for altering or rescinding TPS protections and criticized former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for failing to follow that process.

He also sharply rebuked comments Noem made in December on social media after meeting President Donald Trump, in which she called for a travel ban on countries she said were “flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”“TPS holders from Yemen are not ‘killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies,’” Ho wrote at the beginning of his conclusion, arguing that such rhetoric undermined the humanitarian intent of the law.

The judge cited individual cases including a pregnant woman in Detroit whose unborn child has a congenital heart condition not treatable in Yemen, and a former human rights worker in Brooklyn who said he remained a target of Houthi-aligned militias if returned.Before the ruling, protections for Yemeni refugees were set to end Monday, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Government figures show 2,810 Yemenis currently hold TPS status, while another 425 have pending applications.The Department of Homeland Security defended the administration’s position, saying TPS was always intended to be temporary and that Secretary Noem had reviewed conditions in Yemen and consulted relevant agencies before determining the country no longer met the legal standard for protected status.

“Temporary means temporary and the final word will not be from activist judges legislating from the bench,” the department said in a statement, adding that allowing Yemeni beneficiaries to remain was “contrary to our national interest.”The Trump administration has moved to terminate TPS protections for nationals from nine countries as part of its broader immigration crackdown, including Haiti, Venezuela and Ethiopia.

Rights advocates welcomed the ruling. Razeen Zaman, director of immigrant rights at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said the decision made clear that humanitarian protections should not be transformed into “a deportation pipeline.”Yemen was first designated for TPS in 2015, roughly a year after civil war broke out in the country.

The Obama and Biden administrations repeatedly renewed the designation as fighting, displacement and humanitarian conditions worsened.In 2024, U.S. officials estimated that 2,300 Yemenis were eligible to renew protected status and another 1,700 were newly eligible under the program.

Judge Ho also pointed to recent federal court rulings that allowed migrants from other conflict-hit countries to remain in the United States, signaling broader judicial scrutiny of efforts to narrow humanitarian protections through executive action.

In the declaration, Mohammed bin Issa Al-Jaber—founder, chairman and chief executive of the MBI Group, a multinational conglomerate with assets exceeding $10 billion—said decision-making over war and peace in Yemen has shifted away from the state and into the hands of actors aligned with a regional agenda linked to Iran.

Power Fragmentation and Loss of Sovereignty

Al-Jaber argued that Yemen’s institutional framework has effectively collapsed into a dual structure: an internationally recognised government lacking operational authority, and a rival administration in Sanaa dominated by the Houthi movement, which he said imposes military decisions without public consent.

He characterised this imbalance as a “confiscation of national sovereignty,” warning that Yemenis are being drawn into conflicts that do not serve their national interests. His remarks echo broader assessments that Yemen’s war has increasingly become entangled in regional geopolitical competition, particularly involving Iran and Gulf states.

Federalism as a Structural Remedy

Positioning federalism as a viable exit strategy, Al-Jaber called for a decentralised Yemeni state in which regions are granted full administrative and political authority. He argued that such a framework would enable local governance, reduce corruption, and shield communities from externally driven military escalations.

He pointed to developments in Hadramout, where intervention by Saudi Arabia helped stabilise tensions late last year. Saudi Arabia has been a central actor in Yemen since 2015, backing the recognised government against Houthi forces.

Federal restructuring has previously been proposed during Yemen’s National Dialogue process, though implementation has stalled amid ongoing conflict and institutional breakdown.

Tihama and the Self-Determination Debate

Al-Jaber highlighted Tihama as particularly exposed to the consequences of continued instability. Home to more than eight million people and possessing strategic access to the Red Sea, he said the region holds the economic and geographic foundations of a viable state.

He warned that, in the absence of sovereign decision-making and public consent, calls for self-determination could intensify. “When people are forced into wars that do not serve their interests, self-determination becomes a legitimate political option,” he said.

While such claims remain legally and politically contentious, the principle has been invoked in cases where state authority collapses or fails to represent local populations (UN Charter, Article 1).

International Appeals and Escalating Rhetoric

The statement also urged former U.S. President Donald Trump and the international community not to interpret current developments as reflective of the Yemeni population’s will. It called on the United Nations and the UN Security Council to convene urgently and organise elections under international supervision.

Al-Jaber further issued a 48-hour ultimatum to Houthi leadership to cease claiming representation of the Yemeni people and to issue an apology, warning that failure to do so could trigger widespread public mobilisation across regions from Mahra to Saada and from Aden to Medie.

He concluded that Yemen should only engage in war in self-defence, stressing that long-term stability depends on political consensus and national interest rather than what he described as “reckless military adventurism.”