(CNN) -- A federal judge in California granted a preliminary injunction Wednesday temporarily blocking the government from terminating temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Sudan, El Salvador, Haiti and Nicaragua. US District Judge Edward Chen said the government must maintain TPS and employment authorizations for TPS beneficiaries from those countries while a lawsuit challenging the government's decision to eliminate their protections continues. "It is hereby ORDERED THAT Defendants, their officers, agents, employees, representatives, and all persons acting in concert or participating with them, are ENJOINED AND RESTRAINED from engaging in, committing, or performing, directly or indirectly, by any means whatsoever, implementation and/or enforcement of the decisions to terminate TPS for Sudan, Haiti, El Salvador, and Nicaragua pending resolution of this case on the merit," Chen said in an order issued Wednesday evening. The judge's decision comes a week after a hearing in the case. It goes into effect immediately and is particularly welcome news for TPS recipients from Sudan, who were less than a month away from losing their protections. Temporary protected status, or TPS, protected migrants in the United States from countries that have been hit by dire conditions, such as epidemics, war or natural disasters. Previous administrations had opted to extend the protections for most of the countries involved every few years when they came up for review, but the Trump administration has moved toward ending protections for the majority of immigrants protected under the program, arguing that the initial conditions that prompted the protections are no longer present.