Fox reports Sen. Eric Schmitt has obtained a Biden-era White House memo outlining an end-of-term plan to expand Temporary Protected Status eligibility

A Fox News report says Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) has obtained a Biden White House memo describing plans, in the final days of the Biden administration, to expand Temporary Protected Status (TPS) eligibility to more than 3.1 million noncitizens. The report frames the memo as an effort that would have effectively carried forward a much larger population of people eligible to remain in the United States under TPS, potentially increasing the operational and legal complexity for the next administration’s immigration enforcement posture.

The report does not cite a publicly posted memo in an official federal repository. Under Apex publication rules for executive-action claims, the central allegation is therefore presented as reported by the outlet, not as an independently confirmed White House or Federal Register document. Schmitt’s memo claim, as described by Fox News, would have involved a major change in TPS scale, but additional documentation, dates, and the specific administrative mechanism described in the memo are not confirmed in the provided record.

TPS is a temporary immigration designation created through federal authority and administered through the executive branch, with eligibility rules that can change based on country conditions and official determinations. TPS expansions and terminations have become a recurring point of federal litigation and agency review. Earlier this year, a White House release from the Trump administration said the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration has authority to terminate TPS for Haitian migrants, describing the decision as closing what it characterized as a backdoor amnesty approach used during the prior administration.

The June 26 White House release on the Haiti TPS termination describes that the Supreme Court issued a “major victory” for the Trump administration on the scope of executive authority in ending TPS for a designated group. That release does not confirm any Biden-era memo about expanding TPS to millions of additional people, but it provides context for why large-scale TPS eligibility changes can become central to subsequent administrations’ enforcement and court arguments.

If the Fox News description of the Biden memo is accurate, it would imply that, at least on paper, the outgoing administration was preparing a substantially larger TPS population ahead of the transition. That could matter for federal adjudication and enforcement because TPS recipients may be eligible to obtain work authorization and may be shielded from certain removal actions while their TPS status remains in effect, creating downstream workload for immigration courts, federal agencies, and state and local service systems.

The practical timeline and the specific administrative steps described in the memo, however, are not established in the provided material. As a result, the next step for verification would be identifying whether the memo triggered formal agency rulemaking, determinations, or notices published in official channels. Without an independently confirmed Federal Register notice, an agency release, or a White House document, the memo’s policy details remain a reported allegation rather than a confirmed final government action.