A federal judge in Boston cleared the Department of Homeland Security to end Temporary Protected Status for Somali nationals in the United States, a move that could expose thousands to deportation after the Supreme Court stripped courts of authority to block such decisions.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, an Obama appointee, lifted an administrative stay she had imposed just weeks earlier, allowing DHS to proceed with terminating Somalia's TPS designation. The ruling landed Friday and followed directly from the Supreme Court's June decision in Mullin v. Doe, which held that federal courts lack the power to review the executive branch's decisions to end TPS protections for foreign nationals. Fox News Digital reported that the decision marked a significant legal win for the Trump administration's broader effort to wind down humanitarian immigration designations across multiple countries.
Burroughs did not hide her sympathy for the plaintiffs, four unnamed Somali nationals and advocacy groups including African Communities Together. She acknowledged in her written ruling that they had built a strong case for irreparable harm. But she said the Supreme Court's decision left her no room to act.
The judge wrote that she was "bound... to view things through the Mullin prism," a reference to the high court's June ruling that barred judicial review of non-constitutional challenges to TPS terminations. That decision, handed down on a 6-3 vote, curtailed lower courts' ability to second-guess DHS when it moves to end protections for nationals of any of the 13 countries currently covered by the TPS program, Newsmax reported.
Burroughs went further in her ruling, conceding the plaintiffs' factual position even as she ruled against them. She wrote:
"Plaintiffs have made a convincing showing that they will suffer irreparable harm if the injunction is withheld... and the balance of hardships and the public interest also favor Plaintiffs, given that the government has made no showing that maintaining TPS status for the duration of this litigation would impose an undue burden."
Every traditional factor for an injunction pointed toward the plaintiffs. The government, by the judge's own account, had not even argued that keeping TPS in place during the lawsuit would cost it anything. But after Mullin, none of that mattered. The statute, as the Supreme Court read it, simply removed the courthouse door.
On the plaintiffs' constitutional discrimination claim, an argument that the administration terminated Somalia's TPS out of racial and national-origin bias, Burroughs was equally direct. Just The News reported that the judge wrote:
"Though Plaintiffs lay out a strong case for why the at-issue statements were racist... after Mullin, which included a constitutional race-discrimination claim, the Court cannot discern a path to concluding that Plaintiffs will succeed on the merits of this claim."
That language is worth reading twice. An Obama-appointed federal judge found the plaintiffs made a "strong case" on the facts, and still ruled she had no legal basis to stop the termination. The Supreme Court's framework was that decisive.
Sources at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services previously told Fox News Digital that 2,471 Somali nationals held active TPS status in the United States, with another 1,383 applications pending, a combined total of roughly 3,850 people whose legal footing has now shifted. Somali TPS holders who lack another lawful basis to remain in the country face potential deportation proceedings.
Newsmax placed the number of directly affected Somalis at approximately 1,100, while Just The News cited a figure of roughly 700 active holders. The discrepancy likely reflects different snapshots of the active-versus-pending population, but every estimate points to the same conclusion: a sizable group of people who had lived and worked legally in the United States under TPS now face removal.
Before Burroughs lifted the stay, she had described the stakes in stark terms. In her earlier administrative stay, issued just weeks before Friday's reversal, she wrote that without court intervention, over one thousand people would "face a myriad of grave risks, including detention and deportation, physical violence if removed to Somalia, and forced separation from family members." At the time, she ordered that while the stay held, "the termination shall be null, void, and of no legal effect," and TPS holders would retain work authorization and protection from removal, AP News reported.
Friday's ruling dissolved all of that.
The Trump administration announced its plan to terminate Somalia's TPS designation in January. Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem argued that conditions in Somalia had improved enough to end the humanitarian protections, a position the plaintiffs fiercely contested, pointing to ongoing fighting between Somali government forces and al-Shabaab militants.
TPS, or Temporary Protected Status, is a federal designation that allows nationals of countries experiencing armed conflict, natural disasters, or other extraordinary conditions to live and work in the United States temporarily. It was never designed to be permanent. But in practice, TPS designations for some countries have been renewed for decades, creating populations that have built deep roots in American communities, and making termination politically and legally contentious every time an administration tries it.
Plaintiffs in the Somalia case filed an amended complaint after the Supreme Court's June ruling, raising new constitutional claims under the Fifth Amendment's equal protection guarantee. They alleged that the Trump administration's decision to end Somalia's TPS was motivated by racial and national-origin bias, citing prior statements attributed to Trump in which he allegedly described Somalis as "garbage" and "low IQ people." Burroughs acknowledged the factual weight of that argument but concluded that Mullin, which itself involved a constitutional race-discrimination claim, foreclosed the legal path.
Somalia is not an isolated case. The Supreme Court's Mullin v. Doe decision opened the door for TPS terminations across a wide swath of countries. On June 25, the high court backed the Trump administration's move to strip deportation protections from approximately 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. TPS terminations for South Sudan and Myanmar were also recently allowed to proceed. Only Ethiopia's TPS termination remains blocked by a federal judge, according to Newsmax.
The pattern is clear: the Supreme Court has systematically removed the judicial obstacles that had kept TPS populations in legal limbo for years under prior administrations. Lower-court judges who had blocked terminations, often citing the same irreparable-harm and balance-of-hardships factors Burroughs identified, now find themselves without the authority to do so.
For the Trump administration, the legal landscape has shifted decisively in its favor. The executive branch's authority over TPS, a power Congress granted to the president through the Immigration and Nationality Act, is now largely insulated from courtroom challenge on anything short of a constitutional claim. And even constitutional claims, as the Somalia case demonstrates, face a steep uphill climb after Mullin.
Several critical details remain unresolved. The ruling does not specify an effective date on which Somalia's TPS designation will formally terminate, nor does it clarify whether affected TPS holders will receive a grace period or face immediate removal proceedings. The identities of the four Somali plaintiffs remain sealed, and the full scope of advocacy groups beyond African Communities Together has not been publicly disclosed.
Kristi Noem's current status also raises questions. Fox News Digital referred to her as "then-Homeland Security Secretary," indicating she no longer holds the position. Who is currently leading DHS and overseeing the TPS termination process is not addressed in the available reporting.
What is clear is the legal trajectory. A program designed as a temporary humanitarian measure, one that for years was extended, renewed, and treated as quasi-permanent by successive administrations, is being wound down. The courts, after Mullin, have largely stepped aside. The executive branch has the authority. And the administration is using it.
Temporary was always supposed to mean temporary. It took a Supreme Court ruling to make the word stick.
