A federal judge lifted the last legal barrier blocking the Trump administration from cancelling Temporary Protected Status for roughly 5,000 Ethiopians, a ruling that means every TPS termination the administration has pursued is now in effect.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston removed the temporary stay that had shielded Ethiopian TPS holders from deportation, BBC News reported. The decision clears the way for the Department of Homeland Security to treat those roughly 5,000 individuals as subject to removal. Murphy dismissed several claims in the lawsuit Ethiopian nationals had filed to preserve their protections, though he allowed plaintiffs to continue litigating one remaining argument, that the cancellation was motivated by racial or national origin animus, which would violate the Constitution.
DHS wasted no time. The department posted on X within hours of the ruling, warning those whose TPS had been terminated: "Those with terminated TPS are in our nation ILLEGALLY. They have two options: LEAVE IMMEDIATELY or be DEPORTED." DHS General Counsel James Percival echoed the message on the same platform, writing, "All TPS terminations are in effect!"
The Ethiopian case was the final domino. The Trump administration had already succeeded in ending TPS for nationals from several South and Central American countries, including Venezuela and Honduras. In June, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that courts cannot review TPS revocation decisions in nearly all instances, a landmark finding that the Washington Examiner noted effectively cleared the legal path for every other termination. That ruling ended similar protections for thousands from Haiti and Syria.
Murphy's decision in the Ethiopian case followed the same logic. He found DHS has the authority to terminate TPS designations and that individuals were not entitled to individual hearings before the program ended, Fox News reported. With this ruling, TPS terminations across more than a dozen countries are now fully operative.
The broader effort is part of President Trump's immigration enforcement push, which has also included the State Department revoking more than 175,000 visas on criminal-activity and national-security grounds.
TPS grants eligible foreign nationals temporary work authorization and protection from deportation. It is designed for people whose home countries face armed conflict, natural disaster, or other extraordinary conditions that make safe return impossible. The Biden administration first designated Ethiopia for TPS at the end of 2022, following the devastating Tigray civil war, a two-year conflict that killed hundreds of thousands before the Pretoria Agreement brought a ceasefire.
At the time, the government estimated more than 20,000 Ethiopians who had been living continuously in the United States since October 2022 would qualify. The current figure of roughly 5,000 suggests far fewer ultimately enrolled or maintained eligibility.
DHS under then-Secretary Kristi Noem announced in December that it was ending TPS for Ethiopians, stating that conditions in Ethiopia were safe enough for nationals to return. That announcement prompted the lawsuit from Ethiopian nationals and the advocacy group African Communities Together, which secured the temporary stay Murphy has now lifted.
A previously reported Biden-era White House memo revealed that the prior administration had mapped out TPS expansion for as many as 3 million noncitizens, a strategy critics argued was designed specifically to make future deportations harder to execute.
Diana Konaté, deputy executive director of policy and advocacy at African Communities Together, told Reuters the ruling endangered lives:
"The crisis in Ethiopia is still ongoing, and this decision puts the lives of thousands of Ethiopians living in the US at severe risk."
Konaté's group points to continued instability in Ethiopia. Fighting and drone strikes have been reported in parts of Tigray in recent weeks. The Tigray People's Liberation Front has moved to restore the prewar regional government, dismantling the interim administration appointed by Prime Minister Ahmed Abiy's government. Abiy's federal government has accused Tigrayan leaders of cooperating with Eritrea and the Sudanese military. Armed insurgencies also continue in the Amhara and Oromia regions, Ethiopia's two most-populous states.
Those are real concerns, and they belong in the policy debate. But TPS was never meant to be permanent residency by another name. The statute gives the executive branch the authority to designate and to terminate, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that courts lack the power to second-guess that decision in nearly all cases.
The administration has faced similar pushback at every stage of its TPS rollback. Federal courts recently cleared the way to end protections for Burma and South Sudan as well, following the same legal framework.
Murphy did not hand the administration a clean sweep. He allowed the Ethiopian plaintiffs to continue pressing their argument that the TPS cancellation was driven by racial or national origin animus. If they can prove that claim, it would represent a constitutional violation, a far higher bar than the statutory arguments Murphy already rejected.
That remaining thread means the case is not fully resolved. But it does not stop the termination from taking effect. Ethiopians whose TPS has ended now face the same choice DHS outlined on X: leave voluntarily or face deportation proceedings.
Foreign governments have tried other avenues to slow the administration's enforcement agenda. Mexico filed criminal complaints with U.S. prosecutors earlier this summer in an effort to block deportation of its own citizens, a move that drew sharp criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
For the roughly 5,000 Ethiopians affected, the practical reality is stark. Their work authorizations and deportation protections are gone. The legal architecture that immigration advocates relied on to keep TPS holders in the country, lawsuit by lawsuit, stay by stay, has now been dismantled in every active case.
Temporary was always supposed to mean temporary. It took a new administration and a Supreme Court ruling to make the word stick.