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By Dan Gooding
Associate News Editor
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A woman from Burma has told Newsweek she fears being captured and interrogated if the Trump administration forces her to return home as it seeks to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for the country.
Nina, 33, came to the United States on a Fulbright scholarship in 2021, just a few months after the violent coup in her home country, otherwise known as Myanmar. When the unrest continued, she applied for TPS and was granted protection from deportation, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) now says is unnecessary.
“There are people being deported back to Myanmar this year and then some of them are sent to the interrogation camp,” Nina told Newsweek on Friday. “So that made me very worried because I'm part of the group, I participated in the protests, I donated to the displaced people, and I'm a medical professional in Myanmar. Many medical professionals are against the military, so they don't like someone who is coming back from the U.S, and they will just capture [me] until they found out all about me.”
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TPS Holders Say Burma Is Not Improving
Nina is part of a lawsuit against the Trump administration, asking for TPS to be extended beyond the current January 26, 2026, deadline. The plaintiffs insist the reasons for ending the protections—ones given for other revocations in recent months—are not true, and that conditions back home have not improved.
“There is just widespread political instability and conflict in the country,” San, another Burmese woman who asked to not be identified by her real name, told Newsweek. “You are seeing news of people getting assassinated on a weekly basis, we just saw the military air strike on a hospital just earlier this month, and it's not just limited to the border regions either. It's widespread.”
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The decision to end protections leaves roughly 4,000 Burmese nationals with TPS at risk of losing legal status without a clear path forward, especially with the country also on President Donald Trump's travel ban list, meaning other visas are not being processed.
Many TPS holders have spent years in the U.S, often coming legally in the first place, and have built families and careers. Nina's parents are still in Burma, but she met her husband, a U.S. citizen, while in America and the couple have a child together. In her testimony filed in the case against DHS, she said losing status would destroy her family.
“I know that it is not safe for him to go with me back to Myanmar, because they targeted foreigners too,” she told Newsweek. “Also, my baby is too young to live in back in Myanmar, especially if I'm being captured.”
Nina works with refugees and other people from Burma who rely on her. Losing her status would also mean she cannot legally work in the U.S. She also feels she cannot return home, with her bank account frozen and Burmese passport expired, she feels she could not return to a life there.
San works in public health, telling Newsweek she does not understand why DHS would seek to revoke statuses from those trying to contribute to American life.
“Our people are resilient, I could probably find something [else], but at the same time, I've built so many connections and life here, and so I think about it sometimes and it's really kind of heartbreaking,” San said.
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DHS Says Temporary Means Temporary
The women’s stories highlight an issue with the TPS program—that while it was designed to be temporary, many immigrants spend years with a tenuous status while building a life in the U.S. For many of the countries which have seen their status revoked this year, TPS has been extended multiple times.
For the Trump administration, that often means the system has been abused, and officials have argued DHS is restoring TPS to its original status. In announcing Burma’s termination in November, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said Burma was safe enough.
“Burma has made notable progress in governance and stability, including the end of its state of emergency, plans for free and fair elections, successful ceasefire agreements, and improved local governance contributing to enhanced public service delivery and national reconciliation,” Noem said.
The lawsuit, filed by the Asian American Legal Defense at Education Fund (AALDEF) and the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), urges a judge to force DHS to rethink the move, arguing the justification given by Noem is disingenuous.
“This move to terminate TPS for Burma is part of a broader plan to completely end TPS, as the administration slams the door shut on non-white immigrants,” Dinesh McCoy, staff attorney at the AALDEF, told Newsweek in a statement. “TPS should end only when the evidence supports improved conditions in Burma. Instead, DHS ignored evidence of Burma's ongoing humanitarian crisis from its own staff, colleagues, and experts within the federal government to pursue its discriminatory agenda."
The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of Illinois on behalf of six plaintiffs, asks the judge to rule that DHS’ actions are unlawful, meaning TPS can remain in place, or be extended enough to give immigrants a chance to find alternative ways forward, either in the U.S. or elsewhere.
Legal action like this is not uncommon, with groups challenging the revocation of TPS for Venezuela, Syria, and others, covering hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the U.S.
“Sometimes I feel like I'm just a number,” Nina said. “If I get arrested, people will think of me as just an illegal migrant from Myanmar, the small country, the poor country."
She continued: “But for me, I still have some privileges. I don't have a language barrier, and I can talk to you and participate in the lawsuit. I can still work. I don't want to be an ungrateful person. I'm very grateful that the U.S. government has given us the safety net for years, but I really want us to continue being given the safety net, for all the people from Myanmar who are currently in the U.S.”
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