An Obama-appointed federal judge lifted her own stay blocking the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for Somali nationals, conceding the Supreme Court left her no legal ground to stop it.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs on Friday removed the administrative hold she had imposed on the termination of Somalia's TPS designation, a decision that opens the door for the Department of Homeland Security to move forward with deportations. The ruling marks the latest in a string of legal victories for the Trump administration's immigration enforcement agenda, and it came from a judge who made clear she wished the law pointed the other way.
Burroughs, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Obama, acknowledged that the Somali plaintiffs presented a strong case, and still ruled against them. The reason: a June Supreme Court decision in Mullin v. Doe that stripped lower courts of the authority to second-guess DHS when it decides to end TPS protections.
The judge's own language tells the story. In her order, 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, noting that the evidence pointed to deliberate targeting, but that the Supreme Court had closed the door on using that evidence to block TPS terminations.
"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."
Even on the question of harm, Burroughs sided with the plaintiffs in principle. Fox News reported her finding that the TPS holders "made a convincing showing that they will suffer irreparable harm if the injunction is withheld... and the balance of hardships and the public interest also favor Plaintiffs." She lifted the stay anyway, because the Supreme Court's precedent left no viable legal path forward for the challengers.
That is a federal judge saying, in plain terms: I sympathize with your argument, I believe you will be harmed, and I still cannot help you. The law won.
The linchpin is Mullin v. Doe, the Supreme Court's June decision that held federal courts generally lack jurisdiction to review DHS decisions terminating TPS designations. That case involved Syrian and Haitian migrants whose TPS protections DHS had moved to end. The ruling also narrowed the grounds on which disparaging remarks by officials could sustain an equal protection challenge, a critical limit that gutted the Somali plaintiffs' strongest argument.
Before Mullin, judges across the country had used preliminary injunctions and stays to freeze TPS terminations for years, sometimes a full presidential term or longer. The Supreme Court shut that down. Lower courts that had been blocking the administration's immigration enforcement on TPS now had binding precedent telling them to stand aside.
Burroughs is not the first Biden- or Obama-era appointee to yield to the new precedent. But the bluntness of her concession, calling the plaintiffs' evidence of racial targeting clear, then ruling it legally insufficient, underscores how decisively the Supreme Court shifted the landscape.
The practical impact is immediate. The Washington Examiner reported that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem published a notice on January 14, 2026, terminating Somalia's TPS designation, a protection first granted in 1991, more than three decades ago. The Biden administration had most recently renewed it.
Fox News put the number of current Somali TPS holders at approximately 2,471, with another 1,383 pending applications that will now also be affected. The source cited a figure of 700 impacted by the order; the discrepancy may reflect differences in how the figures are counted or which subset of holders falls under Burroughs' jurisdiction. Either way, thousands of Somali nationals in the United States face the loss of their legal protection from deportation.
Somalia has carried TPS designation for 35 years. The program, Temporary Protected Status, was designed to shield foreign nationals from deportation when conditions in their home countries, such as armed conflict or natural disaster, made return dangerous. Congress called it "temporary." For Somali nationals, it became anything but.
That pattern has drawn sharp criticism from conservatives who argue TPS has been abused as a backdoor to indefinite residency, with successive administrations renewing designations regardless of whether conditions on the ground have actually changed. The Trump administration's decision to terminate the designation reflects that view: temporary means temporary.
The Somali TPS holders who challenged the termination built part of their case on statements by President Trump. The Washington Examiner quoted one such remark: "The Somalians, what they've done to Minnesota, the Somalians, crooked as h***. I don't want them in our country. I'll be honest with you."
Burroughs did not dismiss those remarks. She called the circumstantial evidence of targeting clear. But Mullin had already addressed a constitutional race-discrimination claim and concluded that such statements were not enough to sustain an equal protection challenge to a TPS termination. The Supreme Court drew the line, and Burroughs followed it.
For the plaintiffs, the result is a legal dead end. The highest court in the country said DHS has broad, largely unreviewable discretion over TPS. A lower court judge, even one inclined to agree with the challengers, cannot overrule that. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus and allied advocacy groups have already protested the Supreme Court's TPS rulings, but political objections do not change binding precedent.
Friday's ruling fits into a wider pattern. The Trump administration has moved aggressively to end TPS designations for multiple nationalities, and the courts, after years of blocking such efforts, are now stepping aside. The June Mullin decision removed the primary legal tool opponents had used to freeze terminations, and the downstream effects are arriving fast.
Meanwhile, ICE arrests surged in July, tracking toward the highest monthly total of Trump's second term. With TPS protections falling away for Somali, Syrian, and Haitian nationals, the pool of individuals subject to removal continues to grow.
The case also drew attention to the role of judicial appointments. Rep. Andy Ogles had previously filed impeachment articles against Burroughs for her earlier decision to block the Somalia TPS termination. Her reversal moots that particular grievance, but it also illustrates the pressure judges face when they use procedural tools to delay executive action on immigration, only to have the Supreme Court pull the rug out.
Open questions remain. It is unclear when the TPS termination takes effect now that the stay is lifted, whether other legal challenges in different jurisdictions could slow the process, and what specific timeline DHS will follow for removal proceedings. Burroughs' order clears the legal path. Whether the administration can execute at scale is a logistical question, not a legal one.
For 35 years, "temporary" protection for Somali nationals was anything but. A program Congress designed as a short-term shield became a permanent fixture, until an administration finally called the question and a Supreme Court said the executive branch had every right to do so. The courts have spoken. Now the law can mean what it says.
