The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a Federal Register Notice announcing actions to comply with the order of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to stay proceedings in Bhattarai v. Nielsen, No. 19-cv-00731 (N.D. Cal. March 12, 2019). The parties’ disputes in Bhattarai v. Nielsen are similar to, and will be informed by, the disputes being litigated in Ramos v. Nielsen, No. 18-cv-01554 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 3, 2018). For this reason, DHS will not implement or enforce the decision to terminate TPS for Nepal or Honduras during the pendency of the Ramos v. Nielsen appeal, or by other order of the court. A correction notice for the TPS Nepal/Honduras Bhattarai FRN has published and can be found here.
DHS is also automatically extending the validity of TPS-related Employment Authorization Documents (EADs), Forms I–797, Notice of Action (Approval Notice), and Forms I–94 (Arrival/Departure Record) for beneficiaries under the TPS designation for Nepal through March 24, 2020. Note that beneficiaries under the TPS designation for Honduras either have or will receive TPS-related EADs valid through January 5, 2020. For this reason, the automatic extension discussed in this article does not apply to them.
Completing Form I-9
When completing or updating Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, follow the chart below to determine which documents a current TPS beneficiary from Nepal may present, as well as the new expiration date of their automatically extended EADs:
| If the “Card Expires” date on the employee’s EAD is: | Then, to complete Form I-9, your employee may present this Federal Register Notice along with the EAD that contains a category of A12 or C19 |
Enter the new expiration date of the automatically extended EAD on Form I-9: | You must reverify them before they start work on: |
| June 24, 2018 | March 24, 2020 | March 25, 2020 | |
| June 24, 2019 | March 24, 2020 | March 25, 2020 |
Find more details about these extensions on the TPS designation for Nepal pages and instructions for completing Form I-9 on the I-9 Central TPS page.