The Trump administration will allow 7,000 Syrian immigrants to remain in the United States under Temporary Protected Status (TPS) but will not accept new applicants from the country for the program, according The Associated Press.
For those Syrians already in the U.S., the TPS protections will be extended for another 18 months. Their status had been set to expire on March 31.
Yet the Department of Homeland Security will not designate Syria as a country where the conditions are too dangerous for citizens to return, despite the brutal, years-long civil war in the country.
TPS permits citizens of designated countries that have endured a major natural or man-made disaster to stay in the U.S. legally until their home nations recover.
The Trump administration has dramatically scaled back TPS protections, saying the program has been abused.
The department announced earlier this month it would end the protected status for 262,500 people from El Salvador. Late last year, it similarly ended the protected status for 59,000 Haitians.
Previous Democratic and Republican administrations routinely renewed TPS country designations for the maximum 18-month period, based on an assessment of conditions in the home countries.