Alex Lomong is a man of many labels: He’s a Virginia resident, was a decorated Division I athlete on the Ohio State University track team, and is a middle-distance runner whose times put him in sight of qualifying for the Olympic trials.
He is also an immigrant from South Sudan who was granted Temporary Protected Status. Now, with the Trump administration’s plan to end TPS designation for South Sudanese nationals on Jan. 5, Lomong is one of many facing an uncertain future in the United States.
“Ever since I’ve been here, this is the only home I knew,” Lomong, 28, told NBC News.
Born in a small village in what is now South Sudan, Lomong fled with his mother to Kenya in 2003 as violence at home escalated. He came to the United States in 2009 at age 11 on a student visa and quickly emerged as a standout runner. The end of TPS could mean that he, as well as hundreds of others, will be forced to return to a country with widespread famine and political instability.
“Being deported there is basically like a suicide mission,” Lomong said.
TPS provides temporary legal status to people whose home countries are deemed critically unsafe. South Sudan received the designation in 2011 after it seceded from Sudan to become an independent nation. TPS for South Sudanese people has been extended multiple times over the years, and many have depended on it to remain in the United States.
“You have people who have been relying on that status for at least 14 years, who have paid their taxes, worked, built lives here, and contributed to the U.S. economy,” said Mariam Masumi, an immigration lawyer who works with TPS holders in Virginia.
South Sudan remains deeply unstable, with ongoing violence and mass displacement. The United Nations has warned of widespread hunger, saying millions face food insecurity amid conflict and economic collapse. The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that South Sudan is now among a group of five countries newly subject to full U.S. entry restrictions and travel limitations.
Many South Sudanese TPS holders have settled in Maine, where officials have spent years trying to draw younger workers to its aging labor force. For decades, numerous South Sudanese arrivals were granted refugee status before 2011, and then Temporary Protected Status. They fled violence in their home country to brave Maine’s blistering cold and rebuild their lives.
South Sudanese people have since opened grocery stores and churches, and became nonprofit leaders.
John Ochira is the previous president of the South Sudanese Community Association of Maine and founded the Community Champions League, a soccer program for low-income players in the greater Portland area. A naturalized citizen, he came to the United States in 2005 when he was 17 years old.
“I feel super lucky to have come when I came,” Ochira said. “Having come here as a refugee, I was able to naturalize, but not everybody around me has had the privilege to get naturalized.”
TPS allows people already in the U.S. to stay and work legally for a limited time while conditions in their home country are unsafe, but it does not provide a path to permanent residency, said Ruben Torres, advocacy and policy manager at the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition. Refugee status is granted to people outside the U.S. who face persecution and are resettled with legal status that can lead to citizenship, he said.
Matthew Long, a reverend at Portland’s Sudanese Fellowship Presbyterian Church, said that his community of South Sudanese worshippers panicked after hearing the news of TPS ending. Some, he said, have had trouble finding affordable legal representation.
“We should all be protected by the law in this country, but this is not the case right now,” Long said.
Issac Gang, an associate professor at George Mason University and the U.S. Missions representative for the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, said that the Sudanese community in Washington, D.C., is also preparing for the possibility of deportations in January.
“This status has been around for a while, and a good number of our people have enjoyed the status. Given what’s happening in South Sudan, we never expected it to be terminated, because you look at the war and the civil war and the problems, we didn’t expect a termination,” Gang said.
In October, the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan issued a stark warning that political corruption and crisis is leading to an increase in armed violence, deepening grim human rights conditions. According to a State Department travel advisory last month, South Sudan is designated as a level 4 destination, the highest ranking.
“Do not travel to South Sudan for any reason. U.S. citizens are at risk due to unrest, crime, health, kidnapping, and landmines,” the advisory stated.
“South Sudan still remains very much in a dire humanitarian crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people just even in the last year have left the country,” Masumi said. “It’s not even just a reintegration at this point. You’re having people return to a country where, although yes, there’s no full-scale civil war, there’s still a significant amount of problems within the country.”
Now, facing the prospect of being sent back to famine and conflict, TPS holders have few viable pathways to remain in the United States.
“There are very limited options for folks. There may be other venues or pathways for immigration that they could qualify under, but it is very difficult to access them,” Torres said.
Torres said that the asylum system is so backlogged that cases can take eight to 10 years, and the traditional refugee admissions program has been replaced by a new Trump administration system that advocates argue does not follow the requirements Congress set in 1980.
“Under normal circumstances, TPS holders who lose status might shift to another category like asylum, an H-visa, or another visa they qualify for. But those avenues are largely closed, leaving almost no alternative pathways for people to remain in the country,” Torres said.
Even with the possibility of being returned to South Sudan without any living relatives there, Lomong still holds onto his dreams of becoming a U.S. Olympian, like his brother Lopez, who was a 2008 U.S. flag bearer. He also still hopes to build a life here without the constant fear of having to leave.
“I think it’s sad that we are just all a bunch of pawns in this big chess game, and we don’t have a choice to make any moves,” he said.
