Myanmar’s military regime has seized on Washington’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Myanmar nationals in the United States, portraying it as international recognition of its planned election—a process widely dismissed as a sham.
On Monday, the US government announced its assessment that Myanmar citizens living in the US on the basis of TPS were now able to “safely return home” due to what it claimed were improvements in governance and stability, as well as the regime’s preparations to hold “free and fair” elections. The junta quickly echoed the statement, urging Myanmar nationals in the US to return and “take part in nation-building” by voting in the upcoming polls.
With its election scheduled for late December, the regime has been desperately seeking any signal of international engagement to bolster its claims of legitimacy. Observers said Washington’s announcement appeared to offer them just such an opening at a time when support for the vote is almost nonexistent both domestically and internationally.
The US decision comes after Washington lifted sanctions against four junta-linked arms dealers in July. Just three months earlier, to coup leader Min Aung Hlaing’s delight, the Trump administration cut off federal funding to formerly US-supported broadcasters including Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, effectively silencing key democratic voices and important sources of reporting on the junta’s war crimes in Myanmar.
TPS, granted to nationals from countries facing war, disaster or extraordinary crises, had protected around 4,000 Myanmar citizens from deportation and allowed them to work legally in the US. Its termination will take effect on Jan. 26, 2026, leaving many at risk of forced return.
Trump has also removed TPS for nationals from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Syria, South Sudan and Venezuela.
Rights groups have condemned the move. Phil Robertson, the director of Asia Human Rights and Labor Advocates, said US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was “seriously deluded” to believe junta-organized elections could be “remotely free and fair.” He called the decision “the worst of the worst foreign policy ever seen from the Trump administration in Southeast Asia,” warning that deported Myanmar nationals face “prisons, brutal torture and death.”
Prior to the US announcement, Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said it would be “unfathomable” that elections held in the current circumstances could be free or fair.
“How can anyone say that they’re free and fair?” Turk said in a recent interview with AFP.
Despite the junta’s claims of stability, Myanmar remains engulfed in civil war. The regime has lost swathes of territory to resistance forces and ethnic armed groups, while continuing daily airstrikes and massacres against civilians. The US State Department itself continues to warn Americans not to travel to Myanmar due to armed conflict, unrest and wrongful detentions.
Junta spokesperson Major General Zaw Min Tun welcomed the TPS termination, saying returnees would be treated with “special leniency” unless guilty of serious crimes. He urged them to “come back and vote” in the December-January election, and “take part in building a modern, developed nation.”
Meanwhile, reports suggest the regime has hired lobbying firms in Washington to smooth relations with the US government and Congress.
