A federal judge in Boston lifted the last legal barrier preventing the Trump administration from terminating Temporary Protected Status for thousands of Somali nationals, a ruling the judge herself acknowledged came despite a "strong case" from the challengers.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, an Obama appointee, removed her own administrative stay on August 14, allowing the Department of Homeland Security to move forward with ending Somalia's TPS designation and, with it, the legal shield that has kept Somali nationals from deportation. The decision hands the administration a clean legal runway on an immigration enforcement priority it has pursued since January, when DHS Secretary Kristi Noem published a notice terminating Somalia's TPS designation and Fox News Digital reported on the administration's rationale that conditions in Somalia had improved enough to end the humanitarian protections.
The ruling turns on a single upstream event: the Supreme Court's June 2026 decision in Mullin v. Doe, which held that federal courts lack the power to review DHS decisions to terminate TPS designations on non-constitutional grounds. That precedent left Judge Burroughs with almost no room to keep the stay in place, and she said so plainly in her written order.
The judge's language was unusually candid. She wrote that she was "bound... to view things through the Mullin prism," even as she acknowledged the weight of the challengers' arguments. In one passage, she conceded that the plaintiffs, four unnamed Somali nationals and advocacy groups including African Communities Together, had laid out evidence that Somalia and its people were being singled out.
Just The News reported additional language from the ruling that did not appear in other accounts. Judge Burroughs 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."
She went further:
"This circumstantial evidence clearly shows that Somalia and its people are being targeted, but after Mullin, that is not sufficient to sustain a race-based equal protection claim."
In other words, even a judge sympathetic to the challengers' arguments found the Supreme Court's precedent dispositive. The high court's June ruling did not merely narrow the path for TPS challenges, it effectively closed it. The Mullin decision also rejected an equal protection challenge to the termination of Haiti's TPS designation, the Washington Examiner noted, setting a precedent that weakened the Somali plaintiffs' remaining legal theories.
Temporary Protected Status is a federal program that allows nationals of designated countries to live and work in the United States when conditions in their home countries, armed conflict, natural disaster, or other extraordinary circumstances, make return unsafe. Somalia was first designated for TPS in 1991. That a program labeled "temporary" ran for thirty-five years tells its own story about how Washington treats emergency measures once they are in place.
The Trump administration moved to end that designation in January, with Noem arguing that conditions on the ground in Somalia had improved enough to justify termination. Advocacy groups and four Somali nationals sued in federal court in Boston, and Judge Burroughs initially blocked the termination from taking effect.
Earlier this month, after the Supreme Court handed down Mullin, Burroughs issued a fresh administrative stay when the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint raising new constitutional claims. They alleged the administration violated the Fifth Amendment by terminating Somalia's TPS designation based on racial and national-origin discrimination. Among the evidence cited by the plaintiffs were prior statements by President Trump describing Somalis in harsh terms. The Washington Examiner reported that the plaintiffs pointed to Trump's remarks that Somalis were "crooked as h***" and his statement, "I don't want them in our country."
But even those allegations could not survive the Mullin framework. The Supreme Court had already considered, and rejected, a race-discrimination challenge in the Haiti TPS case. Judge Burroughs applied the same logic and lifted her stay.
Sources at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services previously told Fox News Digital that 2,471 Somali nationals currently hold TPS, with another 1,383 applications pending. Just The News placed the number of directly affected TPS holders at approximately 700. The discrepancy may reflect differences between total holders and those who lack any other lawful basis to remain in the United States, though neither outlet reconciled the figures.
When Judge Burroughs issued her earlier stay, she described the stakes in stark terms. AP News reported that her prior ruling stated:
"Over one thousand people will face a myriad of grave risks, including detention and deportation, physical violence if removed to Somalia, and forced separation from family members."
That stay also specified that while it remained in effect, TPS holders retained work authorization and protection against deportation and detention. With the stay now lifted, those protections evaporate, and Somali nationals who cannot establish another lawful basis to remain in the country face removal proceedings.
Judge Burroughs's initial decision to block the TPS termination drew sharp criticism from congressional Republicans. Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee introduced articles of impeachment against the judge, arguing she had overstepped her authority by ignoring federal law and Supreme Court precedent. Ogles contended that the Immigration and Nationality Act, the federal statute governing TPS, bars courts from reviewing the Homeland Security secretary's TPS designation decisions, and that Burroughs had attempted to sidestep the Mullin ruling by allowing discrimination claims to proceed.
In a statement accompanying the impeachment resolution, Ogles said:
"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 or not the impeachment effort advances, and House impeachments of federal judges are exceedingly rare, the episode illustrates the political pressure that built around the case before the Supreme Court's precedent resolved the legal question.
Several practical questions hang over the decision. DHS has not publicly announced a specific termination date or timeline for ending TPS protections following the lifted stay. The fate of the 1,383 Somali nationals with pending TPS applications is unclear. And it remains to be seen whether the plaintiffs will appeal Burroughs's ruling to a higher court, though the Mullin precedent would make any appellate challenge an uphill fight.
The ruling also leaves open the question of who currently leads DHS. The primary source describes Noem as "then-Homeland Security Secretary," suggesting she may no longer hold the position, but does not identify a successor.
What is clear is the legal landscape. The Supreme Court drew a bright line in Mullin v. Doe: the executive branch decides when TPS designations end, and courts do not get a veto. Judge Burroughs, despite her own misgivings, followed that line. The administration now has the authority it sought.
When "temporary" lasts thirty-five years, the word has lost all meaning. The court, at last, has restored it.
