A federal judge in Boston who once halted the Trump administration's effort to end Temporary Protected Status for Somali nationals has now reversed course and cleared the way for deportations, forced by a Supreme Court decision she acknowledged left her no room to rule otherwise.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, appointed by President Obama, lifted her previously issued stay that had blocked the administration from terminating Somalia's TPS designation. The order opens the door for immigration officials to begin removing thousands of Somali nationals who have lived in the United States under the humanitarian program, some for decades. Breitbart News reported that Burroughs cited the Supreme Court's June ruling in Mullin v. Doe as the decisive factor, writing that she was "bound... to view things through the Mullin prism."
That ruling, handed down in June by the Court's 6-3 conservative majority, held that the TPS statute bars federal courts from reviewing non-constitutional challenges to an administration's decision to end a country's TPS designation. In plain terms, the justices told lower courts to stop second-guessing the executive branch on whether conditions in a foreign country still warrant humanitarian protections.
What makes the Boston ruling striking is how explicitly Burroughs acknowledged the strength of the arguments she was rejecting. She wrote that the plaintiffs, four Somali nationals and two advocacy groups, had made a "convincing showing" that they would suffer "irreparable harm" if TPS protections were stripped. Just The News reported that Burroughs went further in her written order:
"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."
The plaintiffs had argued that the administration's decision to terminate Somalia's TPS was motivated by racial bias against non-white immigrants, citing past statements by President Trump in which he described Somalis as "garbage" and "low IQ people." Those quotes were presented as part of the legal record in the lawsuit. Burroughs found the racial-bias argument compelling on its face, but concluded that Mullin had closed the legal avenue through which such a claim could succeed.
That is a significant concession from a judge who had previously been willing to block the administration outright. It signals that the Supreme Court's Mullin decision has fundamentally shifted the legal landscape on TPS, stripping lower courts of the tools they had used to obstruct executive action on immigration.
Congress created Temporary Protected Status in 1990 as a short-term shield for foreign nationals whose home countries were experiencing armed conflict, environmental disasters, or other extraordinary conditions. Somalia received its TPS designation in 1991. More than three decades later, the Trump administration moved to end it.
Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced in January that the administration planned to terminate Somalia's designation, stating that conditions in the country had improved enough to end the humanitarian protections. The Department of Homeland Security framed the move as a straightforward application of the law. As AP News reported, a DHS statement declared: "Temporary means temporary. Country conditions in Somalia have improved to the point that it no longer meets the law's requirement for Temporary Protected Status."
That position drew immediate legal challenges. The four Somali plaintiffs and two advocacy groups filed suit in Boston, and Burroughs initially sided with them, issuing a stay that declared the termination "null, void, and of no legal effect" while the case proceeded. The earlier ruling noted that over one thousand people faced "detention and deportation, physical violence if removed to Somalia, and forced separation from family members."
The Biden administration had taken a sharply different approach to TPS. A Biden White House memo mapped out TPS expansion for as many as three million noncitizens, a strategy critics said was designed to make mass deportation politically and logistically impossible for any successor administration.
Sources at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services provided Fox News Digital with figures showing that 2,471 Somali nationals currently hold TPS in the United States, with an additional 1,383 who have applied for the status. All of them now face potential deportation if they lack another lawful basis to remain in the country.
Somalia is not the only country affected. The administration has terminated TPS designations for a total of 13 countries: Somalia, Cameroon, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Nepal, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, and Myanmar. Four of those, Somalia, Cameroon, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, are African nations.
The Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling in Mullin v. Doe has already reshaped the legal battlefield across multiple TPS cases. The decision held that the TPS statute prevents judicial review of certain non-constitutional decisions by the administration, including the decision to end a country's designation. Lower courts that had been issuing stays and injunctions to block terminations suddenly found themselves without legal footing.
Before Burroughs reversed course, her earlier rulings had drawn pointed criticism from the administration and from Congress. DHS General Counsel James Percival publicly accused the judge of "defiance, obstruction, and delay," calling her orders part of a broader pattern of judicial resistance to immigration enforcement.
Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee went further. Ogles introduced H. Res. 1472, articles of impeachment against Burroughs, citing high crimes and misdemeanors. The resolution was referred to the House Judiciary Committee.
"The Supreme Court has ruled on this issue, and that's why I filed the articles of impeachment. This judge has a long history of activism... she is ruling against the Trump administration, not because of true legal basis, but because of her activism as a judge."
Whether or not impeachment proceedings advance, the political pressure on Burroughs was unmistakable. And the legal pressure was even clearer: the First Circuit Court of Appeals had already reversed similar administrative stays issued by other district judges who tried to block TPS terminations for Ethiopia and South Sudan, citing the Mullin decision. Biden-appointed judges on the First Circuit sided with the administration in those reversals, a fact that made Burroughs's position increasingly untenable.
The Burroughs saga fits a broader pattern. Obama-appointed federal judges have issued a string of orders blocking Trump administration immigration actions, from TPS terminations to enforcement priorities. DHS has made a habit of noting the appointing president in its public responses, framing the conflict as one between elected executive authority and an ideologically sympathetic judiciary installed by a prior administration.
The Washington Examiner noted that the Supreme Court's Mullin ruling has devastated the legal framework Obama-era judges relied on to halt TPS terminations. With the high court now holding that these decisions fall outside judicial review on non-constitutional grounds, the primary tool lower courts used to block the administration has been removed.
That does not mean every legal challenge is finished. Burroughs's own order acknowledged that plaintiffs raised serious constitutional claims about racial discrimination. But the judge concluded that even those claims could not survive the Mullin framework, a reading that, if upheld on appeal, would leave TPS termination decisions almost entirely in the hands of the executive branch, exactly where the statute's authors placed them.
The 6-3 conservative majority that produced the Mullin ruling remains intact, and its effects are compounding. Each lower court that falls in line reinforces the precedent. Each district judge who tries to resist faces reversal from the appellate courts above.
Several critical details remain unclear. The precise timeline for when TPS terminations will take effect for Somali nationals has not been publicly specified. It is also unknown what relief, if any, remains available to the plaintiffs now that the stay has been lifted. The names of the four Somali plaintiffs and two advocacy groups behind the lawsuit have not been disclosed in available reporting.
For the 2,471 Somali nationals currently holding TPS, and the 1,383 who applied, the legal road ahead has narrowed sharply. Unless they hold another lawful immigration status, they face the prospect of removal to a country many left decades ago.
When a program called "temporary" lasts 35 years, the real question was never whether it would end, but whether anyone in Washington had the will and the legal authority to end it. The Supreme Court just answered the second half. The administration appears ready to answer the first.