A federal judge has lifted the last legal barrier preventing the Trump administration from stripping Temporary Protected Status from nearly 1,100 Somali nationals, handing the White House a clean win in its campaign to roll back humanitarian immigration protections across the board.
U.S. District Judge Allison Dale Burroughs, who had previously blocked the administration's effort to terminate Somalia's TPS designation, reversed course after a Supreme Court ruling in June sharply curtailed the judiciary's power to second-guess the Department of Homeland Security on such decisions. The result: DHS can now move forward with ending protections that have allowed Somali nationals to live and work in the United States, in some cases for years, without facing deportation.
Fox News first reported the ruling as a major immigration victory for the administration, which has framed TPS terminations as central to restoring what it calls a lawful and sovereign immigration system.
The turning point came in June, when the Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority ruled in Mullin v. Doe that federal courts lack broad authority to review DHS decisions to end TPS designations. The Immigration and Nationality Act, the majority held, strips courts of jurisdiction over the secretary's discretionary TPS calls.
That ruling pulled the rug out from under a series of lower-court injunctions that had frozen the administration's TPS terminations for 13 countries. Judge Burroughs had been one of the judges maintaining such a block. After Mullin, her legal footing evaporated.
Burroughs did allow plaintiffs to press forward with claims of racial and national-origin discrimination in the administration's TPS decisions. Challengers pointed to President Trump's past descriptions of Somalis, including calling them "garbage" and "low IQ people," as evidence that the termination was motivated by racial animus rather than legitimate policy judgment. But those claims were not enough to sustain the injunction blocking termination, and Burroughs cleared DHS to proceed.
The Somalia decision fits into a broader pattern. Newsmax reported that two other federal judges have also allowed the administration to terminate TPS for South Sudan and Myanmar in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling. Only Ethiopia's TPS termination remains blocked by a court order.
Taken together, the administration's TPS rollback touches nationals from more than a dozen countries. The legal architecture supporting those protections has crumbled quickly since the high court's June decision. For the White House, each cleared termination represents a brick removed from what it views as an outdated system of quasi-permanent humanitarian stays that were never meant to last indefinitely.
TPS was created by Congress in 1990 to offer temporary shelter to foreign nationals whose home countries were hit by armed conflict, natural disasters, or other extraordinary conditions. The statute gives the DHS secretary discretion to designate and terminate protections. Critics of the program, particularly on the right, have long argued that "temporary" became permanent by bureaucratic inertia, with successive administrations renewing designations for decades without meaningful review.
Before Burroughs reversed course, her earlier decision to block the Somalia TPS termination drew fierce blowback from congressional Republicans. Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee introduced articles of impeachment against the judge, accusing her of ignoring federal law and Supreme Court precedent by maintaining her injunction.
Ogles argued that the Immigration and Nationality Act explicitly bars courts from reviewing the DHS secretary's TPS designation decisions, and that Burroughs had attempted to sidestep the Supreme Court's Mullin ruling by allowing discrimination claims to keep the case alive. Breitbart reported on the impeachment resolution, which Ogles framed as part of a broader Republican effort to challenge what he called judicial interference with the administration's immigration enforcement agenda.
Ogles did not hold back in a public statement accompanying the resolution:
"America is not Africa's dumping ground. We will end Temporary Protected Status, remove those who have no lawful right to remain, and put the sovereignty of the American people FIRST."
Whether the impeachment effort gains traction in the House remains to be seen. Judicial impeachments are exceedingly rare, and removing a federal judge requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate. But the move signals the depth of Republican frustration with judges who have, in their view, used the bench to obstruct lawful executive action on immigration.
With the injunction lifted, the practical question shifts to enforcement. Nearly 1,100 Somali nationals currently hold TPS. Once the designation formally ends, those individuals lose their work authorization and lawful status. They would, in theory, become subject to removal proceedings.
Authorities have not publicly confirmed a timeline for when DHS will formally terminate Somalia's designation or how quickly enforcement actions would follow. Investigators and immigration officials will need to determine whether affected individuals have other avenues to remain in the country, such as pending asylum claims, family-based petitions, or other relief.
Deportation to Somalia itself presents logistical and diplomatic complications that the administration has not publicly addressed in detail. Somalia remains one of the most unstable countries in the world, with ongoing armed conflict involving al-Shabaab militants and limited governmental control outside Mogadishu. Whether the Somali government will accept returned nationals, and under what conditions, is a question DHS will have to answer operationally.
The legal fight is not entirely over. Judge Burroughs allowed the discrimination claims raised by Somali TPS holders to continue even as she cleared the termination to proceed. Plaintiffs allege that the decision to end Somalia's TPS was driven not by legitimate policy review but by racial and national-origin bias.
Those claims face a steep climb. The Supreme Court's Mullin decision narrowed the legal terrain considerably, and proving discriminatory intent behind an executive policy decision requires clearing a high evidentiary bar. Public statements by the president, however inflammatory, do not automatically establish that a specific administrative action was taken for discriminatory reasons under existing precedent.
Still, the discrimination track gives plaintiffs a thread to pull. If discovery produces internal communications or policy documents suggesting that racial animus drove the TPS decision, the case could take on new life. For now, though, the practical effect is clear: the termination moves forward while the discrimination suit plays out on a separate track.
The Somalia ruling leaves Ethiopia as the sole remaining country whose TPS termination is still blocked by a federal court. If that injunction falls, the administration will have achieved a near-total rollback of TPS protections that once covered nationals from 13 countries.
For conservatives, the trajectory vindicates a long-held argument: that the executive branch has clear statutory authority over TPS designations, and that courts overstepped for years by freezing terminations under various legal theories. The Supreme Court's Mullin decision, in this view, simply restored the law to its plain meaning.
For TPS holders and immigration advocates, the speed of the collapse has been jarring. Protections that existed for years, in some cases decades, are vanishing in a matter of weeks as lower courts fall in line with the high court's ruling. Legal challenges remain, but the window for judicial intervention has narrowed to a sliver.
When courts stop substituting their judgment for the law Congress actually wrote, the executive branch can do what the statute always allowed. That principle held this week. Whether it holds for the last remaining case will tell the country whether the judiciary has truly gotten the message.
