President Trump just picked up another major courtroom victory for his immigration agenda.

A federal judge in Boston has lifted the last remaining judicial block on the administration’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status for more than 5,000 Ethiopians living in the United States.

That means the Department of Homeland Security can now move forward with the termination while a narrower constitutional claim continues through the courts.

The practical result is immediate: the protection that allowed thousands of Ethiopian nationals to remain and work in the country no longer stands in the administration’s way.

Ali Bradley broke down the ruling Tuesday afternoon:

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U.S. News reports that U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy rejected the remaining nonconstitutional arguments being used to keep the Ethiopian TPS termination on hold.

The plaintiffs had argued, among other things, that the 1990 law establishing TPS gave termination authority to the attorney general rather than DHS. Murphy rejected that theory, following other judges who recently reached the same conclusion in challenges involving South Sudan, Myanmar and Somalia.

Murphy’s ruling does not wipe the entire lawsuit off the docket. The challengers may continue pursuing a Fifth Amendment claim alleging that the administration acted out of racial or national-origin bias.

But that claim no longer blocks the termination from taking effect. On the question that matters right now — whether DHS can act — the administration won.

DHS General Counsel James Percival celebrated the decision with a blunt announcement:

The ruling caps a legal fight that began after Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin moved to end Ethiopia’s TPS designation in December 2025.

The Biden administration first granted the protection in 2022, citing armed conflict, displacement and severe humanitarian conditions inside Ethiopia. It extended and redesignated the program in 2024.

The official Federal Register termination notice says DHS later reviewed current conditions with other federal agencies and concluded Ethiopia no longer met the statutory requirements for TPS.

Under federal law, TPS is a temporary protection available to eligible nationals of countries affected by armed conflict, environmental disaster or other extraordinary conditions. It can shield recipients from removal and allow them to work while the designation remains in force.

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It is not permanent residency. It does not provide citizenship. And the statute requires the DHS secretary to terminate a designation when the government determines that the qualifying conditions no longer exist.

Murphy initially blocked the administration’s move in April. He ruled that DHS had likely failed to follow required procedures and described the agency’s explanation as pretextual.

Then the Supreme Court changed the legal landscape.

In June, the justices ruled 6-3 in Mullin v. Doe that the TPS statute bars courts from reviewing nonconstitutional challenges to DHS decisions on whether to designate, extend or terminate a country’s protected status.

The Supreme Court’s official opinion arose from disputes over Haiti and Syria, but its reasoning reached far beyond those two countries.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote that Congress used sweeping language when it prohibited judicial review of “any determination” concerning a TPS designation. The Court reversed the lower-court orders that had postponed those terminations and sent the cases back for further proceedings.

The majority rejected the idea that judges could review the process DHS used while leaving the ultimate termination decision alone. In the Court’s view, Congress barred review of the whole determination, including the steps and reasoning that produced it.

The ruling also addressed the challengers’ constitutional theory. Although constitutional claims are not covered by the same statutory bar, the Court concluded that the plaintiffs had not shown a sufficient likelihood of success to justify keeping the terminations frozen during litigation.

That combination — no review of the statutory claims and no interim relief on the constitutional claim — stripped away the legal foundation that had kept several TPS terminations on hold.

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That ruling quickly reached the Ethiopian case. On July 29, the First Circuit reversed Murphy’s earlier postponement order because its statutory foundation could not survive the Supreme Court’s decision.

The First Circuit’s published judgment said the nonconstitutional claims were the only basis for the April block. It sent the case back to Boston with instructions to proceed under the Supreme Court’s new rule.

The three-judge panel acted on an expedited government request after previously denying an immediate administrative stay. Once the Supreme Court issued Mullin, the appellate court concluded that Murphy’s postponement order could no longer stand.

The panel granted summary reversal, denied the government’s separate request for a stay as moot and ordered the mandate to issue immediately. That left Murphy to address the remaining claims without relying on the statutory arguments the Supreme Court had taken off the table.

The appeals court went beyond predicting that the administration was likely to win later. It removed the April order that had kept Ethiopian TPS alive while the case moved forward.

Tuesday’s order removed what was left of that obstacle.

Homeland Security followed with a warning directed at people whose TPS designations have been terminated:

The administration has repeatedly argued that TPS was designed as short-term humanitarian relief, not a substitute for the normal immigration system.

Opponents counter that dangerous conditions remain in Ethiopia and that ending the designation could expose families to removal, job loss and serious risk if they are forced to return.

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The bias claim still has to be litigated, and the plaintiffs can keep arguing that Ethiopia remains too dangerous for people who built lives in the United States to be sent back.

For now, however, that fight will proceed without an order preserving TPS. The final judicial block is gone, and President Trump’s administration is free to enforce the Ethiopian termination.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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