A federal judge lifted the last remaining legal barrier to the Trump administration's termination of Temporary Protected Status for roughly 5,000 Ethiopians, completing a sweep across more than a dozen countries that advocacy groups say puts thousands of lives at risk.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy ruled that the administration can proceed with canceling TPS for Ethiopian nationals, removing a temporary stay that had blocked the move for months. The decision means every TPS termination the Trump administration has pursued is now in effect, covering countries across Africa, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.
The Department of Homeland Security wasted no time making its position clear. In a post on X, the agency warned that those whose TPS has been terminated "are in our nation ILLEGALLY" and face two options: "LEAVE IMMEDIATELY or be DEPORTED."
DHS General Counsel James Percival echoed that message on X, writing, "All TPS terminations are in effect!" The Washington Examiner reported that Murphy's ruling cleared the final judicial block on TPS revocations nationwide, marking a sweeping enforcement victory for the administration.
TPS is a federal designation that shields foreign nationals from deportation when conditions in their home country, armed conflict, natural disasters, or other extraordinary circumstances, make a safe return unlikely. It was never designed as a path to permanent residency, though critics have long argued it functions as one in practice.
The Biden administration first designated Ethiopia for TPS at the end of 2022, following a devastating two-year civil war centered in the northern Tigray region. At the time, the government estimated more than 20,000 Ethiopians who had been displaced and were living continuously in the United States since October 2022 would qualify. The current figure of roughly 5,000 is what remains on the rolls.
That civil war ended with the 2022 Pretoria Agreement after hundreds of thousands were killed. DHS, under then-Secretary Kristi Noem, announced in December that it was ending TPS for Ethiopians, stating that conditions in the country were safe enough for their return.
Ethiopian nationals sued to preserve the designation, and a temporary stay blocked the termination while the case moved forward. Judge Murphy, a Biden appointee sitting in Boston, Fox News reported, dismissed some of those claims while allowing one thread of the lawsuit to continue: whether the TPS cancellation was motivated by racial or national origin animus, which would violate the Constitution.
That remaining claim does not stop the termination from taking effect. The roughly 5,000 Ethiopians who held TPS are now subject to deportation proceedings.
Murphy's decision did not arrive in a vacuum. In June, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that courts cannot review TPS revocation decisions in nearly all instances, a landmark finding that stripped lower courts of the primary tool immigration advocates had used to block terminations. That ruling ended similar protections for thousands of Haitian and Syrian nationals and handed the Trump administration a major legal win on immigration enforcement.
With that precedent in hand, the administration moved to finalize TPS terminations across the board. Ethiopia was the last country where a court order still stood in the way. Venezuela, Honduras, Haiti, Syria, and several others had already lost their designations.
The pattern has been consistent. Federal judges who initially blocked TPS terminations have found their legal footing eroded by the Supreme Court's June decision. In a related case, a federal judge cleared the administration to end protections for Somali nationals under similar reasoning.
Diana Konaté, deputy executive director of policy and advocacy at the advocacy group African Communities Together, told Reuters the ruling created fresh dangers for Ethiopians in the United States. As BBC News reported, Konaté said:
"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 claim rests on the security situation inside Ethiopia. Fighting and drone strikes have been reported in parts of Tigray in recent weeks. The Tigray People's Liberation Front recently moved to restore the prewar regional government and dismantle an interim administration appointed by Prime Minister Ahmed Abiy's government. Abiy's federal government has accused Tigrayan leaders of cooperating with neighboring Eritrea and the Sudanese military, raising concerns that a wider regional conflict could develop.
Oromia and Amhara, two of Ethiopia's most populous regional states, continue to grapple with armed insurgencies of their own. Advocates argue these conditions are exactly the kind of instability TPS was designed to address.
DHS sees it differently. The department's position, stated when it first announced the termination under Noem, is that conditions in Ethiopia are safe. The Supreme Court's June ruling largely removed the judiciary's ability to second-guess that determination. Not every judge has followed the same path, a Clinton-appointed judge preserved South Sudan TPS protections despite the high court's ruling, drawing a sharp rebuke from DHS, but the legal trend has moved decisively in the administration's favor.
President Trump has sought to cancel TPS protections for people from more than a dozen countries as part of a broader immigration enforcement agenda. The program, which has operated for decades, has long drawn criticism from immigration hawks who argue it allows temporary designations to become de facto permanent residency for tens of thousands of foreign nationals with no clear end date.
With Murphy's ruling, the administration has now cleared every legal obstacle to its TPS terminations. The Supreme Court cleared the way in June, and lower courts have followed.
The one remaining legal thread, the racial animus claim Judge Murphy allowed to continue, could still produce litigation down the road. But it does not block deportations while the case proceeds. For the roughly 5,000 Ethiopians affected, the legal shield is gone.
Temporary was always supposed to mean temporary. It took years of legal challenges and a Supreme Court ruling to enforce that plain meaning, but the law, at last, says what it says.
