In an unexpected move this week, the Trump administration will announce that it is extending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Lebanese citizens in the US for another six months, until November.
The decision, filed in the US Federal Register on Wednesday, is scheduled for publication on Friday.
It is the first voluntary extension of TPS carried out since President Donald Trump returned to power in January 2025. His attempts to terminate designations for citizens of Haiti, Somalia, and Venezuela, among others, have been halted - at least temporarily - by the courts.
According to the filing, however, the rationale appears to be that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin has not had the capacity to review TPS for Lebanon and make a determination 60 days before the expiry date.
An estimated 11,000 Lebanese nationals are covered under TPS, based on 2024 figures. The extension allows them to continue living and working legally in the US until 27 November.
TPS is a designation for a limited period that allows non-citizens to obtain a US work permit while they await conditions to improve in their own countries, if they are deemed by the US government to be too dangerous to return to. It can be extended for up to 18 months at a time, with no overall limit set in stone.
On 10 March, advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's shutdown of the TPS programme for Somalis in the US.
Three Somali TPS holders, one Somali TPS applicant, and the groups African Communities Together and Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans said in their complaint that Somalia is "currently facing a humanitarian crisis with roots that stretch back decades".
"In recognition of ongoing armed conflict and other extraordinary conditions threatening the safety of Somali nationals, the United States government designated Somalia for TPS in 1991," they wrote.
"Since 2002, each extension and redesignation has acknowledged Somalia’s ongoing armed conflict, which has led to arbitrary detentions, physical violence, torture, the murder of civilians, and other severe human rights violations."
The Trump administration has been actively ending TPS programmes since coming to power, arguing that it was not a pathway to permanent residency.
"Temporary means temporary. Country conditions in Somalia have improved to the point that it no longer meets the law’s requirement for Temporary Protected Status," former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement earlier this year, regarding ending TPS for Somalis.
Lebanese visitors to the US were brought under the TPS programme during the Biden administration in October 2024, amid Israel's escalating war on Lebanon.
Israel has killed more than 3,000 Lebanese and wounded nearly 10,000 since Hezbollah attacked Israel on 8 October 2023, in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza.
The extension of TPS for Lebanese citizens is effective from 28 May 2026 until 27 November 2026, DHS said, and only "to otherwise qualified nationals of Lebanon (or in the case of an alien with no nationality, an alien who last habitually resided in Lebanon)... continuously residing in the United States since October 16, 2024".
The move comes as the first Lebanese-Israeli security talks by top military officials are expected to take place in Washington on Friday.
Last month, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted the ambassadors of Lebanon and Israel for the first direct talks between the two sides in more than three decades.
But a ceasefire was not on the agenda, and the main subject of concern, Hezbollah, had no representation, leaving Lebanese officials with little to no authority coming into the meeting.
Despite an official ceasefire, Israel stepped up its military campaign against Lebanon this week with an expanded ground invasion that surpasses the "buffer zone" in southern Lebanon. In just 24 hours, Israel claimed to have hit over 135 "Hezbollah targets", including strikes on the capital, Beirut.
At least 14 people have been killed in the renewed Israeli strikes, including children, with the total death toll exceeding 3,000 Lebanese.
