A Massachusetts federal judge has issued a fresh stay halting the Trump administration's effort to end Temporary Protected Status for Somali nationals, a move DHS officials call open defiance of the Supreme Court.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, an Obama appointee, granted the administrative stay on Friday after plaintiffs led by African Communities Together filed an amended complaint and emergency motion alleging the administration violated the Fifth Amendment in terminating Somalia's TPS designation. The order declared the termination "void" while the court decides whether the claims warrant a longer pause, Fox News Digital reported.
The timing is what makes the ruling so striking. Just days earlier, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed similar administrative stays that two other federal judges had issued to block TPS terminations for Ethiopia and South Sudan. Those reversals relied squarely on the Supreme Court's June ruling in Mullin v. Doe, which sharply limited lower courts' ability to block TPS terminations based on non-constitutional claims.
Burroughs issued her new stay anyway, one day after the plaintiffs rewrote their lawsuit around constitutional grounds.
James Percival, the Department of Homeland Security's General Counsel, did not hold back. Writing on X, he framed the order as part of a pattern by lower courts to stall the administration's immigration agenda regardless of what higher courts have ruled.
"Judge Allison Burroughs just entered yet another order preventing the termination of Somalia TPS. There is no serious debate about what is going on in these cases, defiance, obstruction, and delay."
Percival's frustration reflects a broader standoff between the executive branch and a handful of federal district judges who have repeatedly blocked TPS terminations even as appellate courts and the Supreme Court have sided with the administration's authority to end the designations. The pattern of resistance extends beyond the judiciary, local officials in cities like New York have also refused to accept Supreme Court rulings on TPS.
Burroughs first entered an administrative stay on March 13 preventing the Somalia TPS termination from taking effect. That stay had been in place for months. When the First Circuit reversed the Ethiopia and South Sudan stays issued by Judges Brian Murphy and Patti Saris, citing Mullin, it appeared the legal ground beneath Burroughs' original order had collapsed.
The plaintiffs responded by filing their amended complaint Thursday, pivoting to Fifth Amendment claims. Burroughs granted the new stay on Friday.
Eric Wessan, Iowa's Solicitor General, offered a detailed critique of the amended complaint. Writing on X, he said four of the lawsuit's five claims are foreclosed by the Supreme Court's Mullin decision and called the remaining claim "frivolous."
"Even if this was a fresh lawsuit without the baggage, the claims cannot justify any relief-- much less meet the high bar for interim relief."
Wessan described Burroughs' procedural maneuver, issuing what he called a "novel 'administrative stay'", as an end-run around the normal legal standard for emergency relief. Under established precedent, a party seeking an injunction must show, among other things, a likelihood of success on the merits and irreparable harm. Wessan argued the amended complaint clears neither bar.
He urged Burroughs to reconsider. "This is very bad," Wessan wrote. "I hope that, with time to review, Judge Burroughs vacates her administrative stay to allow the correct status quo to continue."
The administration's broader effort to end TPS designations has triggered lawsuits across multiple fronts. The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to lift lower court blocks on ending TPS for Syria and Haiti as well, with the Solicitor General arguing those cases are "materially similar" and warrant full Supreme Court review, the Washington Examiner reported.
The amended complaint rests on two Fifth Amendment theories: that the TPS termination denied Somali nationals due process, and that it was motivated by racial and national-origin discrimination in violation of the equal protection guarantee.
Central to the plaintiffs' argument is a November 2025 post by President Trump on Truth Social announcing the end of TPS months before DHS had completed its review process. The complaint alleges the decision was predetermined, that the agency's formal review was a formality because the president had already declared the outcome publicly.
The complaint also cites Trump's past remarks describing Somali immigrants as "criminals," "gang members," and "low IQ," along with statements that he doesn't "want them in our country" and to "send them back." The full text of the Truth Social post, as cited in the Washington Examiner's reporting, included Trump writing: "I am, as President of the United States, hereby terminating, effective immediately, the Temporary Protected Status (TPS Program) for Somalis in Minnesota."
The plaintiffs further alleged the administration showed preferential treatment to white immigrants, pointing to protections created for white Afrikaner refugees from South Africa. Their complaint stated: "These statements evince the Administration's racist and xenophobic motivations to exclude Somali people from the country. At the same time, the Administration has expressed preferences for white immigrants as 'nice' and welcome in the U.S. and created protections for white Afrikaner refugees from South Africa."
African Communities Together had not responded to Fox News Digital's request for comment as of publication.
The Supreme Court's June ruling in Mullin v. Doe was widely understood as a decisive check on lower courts that had been blocking TPS terminations. The decision held that lower courts generally cannot block TPS terminations based on non-constitutional claims, a ruling that stripped away the primary legal basis most challengers had relied on.
The First Circuit applied Mullin almost immediately, reversing the administrative stays that Judges Murphy and Saris had issued for Ethiopia and South Sudan. That sequence suggested the legal landscape had shifted decisively in the administration's favor.
Burroughs' new stay complicates that picture. By accepting an amended complaint built on constitutional grounds, specifically the Fifth Amendment, the plaintiffs and the judge have attempted to thread the narrow opening Mullin left open. The Supreme Court's ruling barred non-constitutional challenges; it did not explicitly foreclose constitutional ones.
Whether that distinction holds up is the central legal question. Wessan's analysis suggests it should not, he described the constitutional claims as legally insufficient even on their own terms, separate from Mullin's constraints. The prior administration's aggressive expansion of TPS, a Biden-era White House memo laid groundwork to shield some three million noncitizens from deportation using the program, makes the current legal battles over termination all the more consequential.
The D.C. Circuit, meanwhile, denied the administration's bid to lift a block on ending TPS for Haiti in a 2-1 ruling, with the original district court finding the termination decision was unlawfully "pretextual." That split among circuits adds pressure on the Supreme Court to take up a TPS case on its full merits docket.
Burroughs is now the third Massachusetts-area federal judge to issue an administrative stay blocking a Trump administration TPS termination. Murphy and Saris did the same for Ethiopia and South Sudan before the First Circuit reversed them. In each case, the pattern followed the same arc: the administration moved to end a TPS designation, plaintiffs sued, and a district judge halted the termination, only for a higher court to step in and lift the block.
The question is whether the First Circuit or the Supreme Court will do the same here. The constitutional framing of the amended complaint gives Burroughs a different legal hook than Murphy and Saris relied on. But Percival and Wessan both argue the substance is the same: a lower court refusing to let the executive branch exercise authority that the Supreme Court has recognized.
The administration has continued to press its enforcement agenda on other fronts. DHS has secured tens of thousands of voluntary departure orders as enforcement pressure mounts, and Congress has moved to back the effort with resources, the House recently passed a $70 billion immigration enforcement bill after a razor-thin vote.
Several open questions remain. The full text of Burroughs' Friday order has not been made public in the available reporting. The specific identities of three of the five claims in the amended complaint, beyond the two Fifth Amendment theories, are unclear. And the current on-the-ground status of Somalia's TPS designation, whether any part of the termination has taken effect or the stay has frozen the process entirely, is not spelled out.
When the Supreme Court speaks clearly and lower courts keep finding new reasons not to listen, the problem is no longer legal complexity. It is a question of whether judicial authority means anything at all.
