A federal judge in Massachusetts has blocked the Trump administration from terminating Temporary Protected Status for Ethiopian nationals, ruling that the Department of Homeland Security disregarded the process Congress laid out in statute when it moved to end the designation.
Judge Brian Murphy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued a memorandum and order on April 8 granting plaintiffs’ motion to postpone the effective date of the termination while the case proceeds on the merits. Murphy, nominated by then-President Joe Biden in 2024, wrote in his order that the administration had acted “without regard for the process delineated by Congress.”
DHS fired back swiftly. A department spokesperson called the stay “just the latest example of judicial activists trying to prevent President Trump from restoring integrity to America’s legal immigration system.”
The lawsuit challenged DHS’s termination of Ethiopia’s TPS designation on three grounds: violations of the TPS statute itself, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the Equal Protection Clause. Murphy sided with the plaintiffs on the threshold question of whether the termination should be paused, finding the administration had bypassed congressional requirements.
Murphy did not mince words in his reasoning. From the order:
“Fundamental to this case, and indeed to our constitutional system, is the principle that the will of the President does not supersede that of Congress. Presidential whims do not and cannot supplant agencies’ statutory obligations.”
He went further, invoking the Constitution’s Take Care Clause. Murphy wrote that administrative agencies “granted executive authority by Congress may operate only within the bounds Congress has set,” and that in this case, the defendants had “disregarded both that foundational principle and the statutory scheme enacted by Congress.”
The language is pointed. Whether the merits ultimately support the plaintiffs is a separate question, the order only postpones the termination while the court works through the full case. But the framing leaves little doubt about where this judge stands on the procedural question.
Then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem issued a notice last year indicating that Ethiopia’s TPS designation would be terminated as of Feb. 13 at 11:59 p.m. The move never took effect. Legal challenges intervened, and the termination has been stymied amid what Fox News Digital described as “legal wranglings.”
Murphy’s April 8 order formalized the freeze. The specific names of the plaintiffs and the case docket number were not identified in available reporting, and no new effective date for the termination was set. Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment on Thursday; no response was noted.
The pattern here is familiar. Across multiple policy areas, federal courts have become the primary battleground for opponents of the Trump administration’s executive actions, with judges appointed by Democratic presidents frequently issuing stays or injunctions.
The Department of Homeland Security did not treat the ruling as a routine procedural setback. Its spokesperson’s statement to Fox News Digital framed the dispute as part of a broader pattern of judicial interference.
“This stay by radical, Biden-appointed Judge Brian Murphy is just the latest example of judicial activists trying to prevent President Trump from restoring integrity to America’s legal immigration system.”
The spokesperson also made the substantive case for ending Ethiopia’s TPS designation, arguing that conditions on the ground no longer justify the protection.
“Temporary means temporary. Country conditions, including armed conflicts, in Ethiopia have improved to the point that it no longer meets the law’s requirement for Temporary Protected Status. The Trump administration is putting Americans first.”
That argument, “temporary means temporary”, cuts to the heart of the TPS debate. The program was designed to shield foreign nationals from deportation when their home countries face armed conflict, natural disaster, or other extraordinary conditions. Critics have long argued that TPS designations, once granted, become effectively permanent, renewed administration after administration regardless of whether original conditions persist.
Ethiopia is far from the only TPS designation the Trump administration has targeted. The administration has moved to wind down protections for nationals of several countries, arguing that conditions have improved sufficiently to end what was always meant to be a temporary shield.
Each termination attempt has drawn legal fire. And each lawsuit lands before a federal judge who must decide whether the administration followed the statutory procedures Congress wrote into the Immigration and Nationality Act, or whether it cut corners.
Murphy’s order suggests he believes DHS cut corners here. But the judge’s reasoning rests heavily on process, not on whether Ethiopia’s conditions actually warrant continued TPS. The distinction matters. Even if the administration is right that armed conflicts in Ethiopia have improved, it still must follow the statutory steps Congress prescribed. That is the administration’s vulnerability in this case, and Murphy drove straight at it.
The result, for now, is that Ethiopian TPS holders remain in the United States with legal status. The merits of the case, whether the termination was substantively justified and procedurally sound, remain unresolved. Meanwhile, not every federal judge has ruled against the administration in recent high-stakes policy disputes, a reminder that outcomes depend heavily on the specific legal question and the specific courtroom.
There is a real tension at the center of this case that conservatives should take seriously. The administration’s policy goal, ending a “temporary” protection that has stretched on for years, reflects a legitimate concern shared by millions of Americans. Programs labeled temporary should not become permanent through bureaucratic inertia or political convenience.
But the rule of law runs in both directions. If Congress wrote a specific process into the TPS statute, notice requirements, condition reviews, timelines, then the executive branch must follow that process, even when the underlying policy is sound. Conservatives who rightly demand that presidents respect statutory limits when a Democrat occupies the Oval Office cannot abandon that principle when the policy outcome is one they favor.
The question is whether Murphy’s reading of the statute is correct, or whether his order stretches procedural requirements beyond what Congress intended in order to reach a preferred result. That question will be answered as the case moves forward on the merits.
Immigration enforcement failures extend well beyond TPS disputes. Federal prosecutors have stepped in to charge illegal immigrants in cases where local courts have failed to hold offenders accountable, and DHS itself has acknowledged gaps in the vetting system that allowed individuals with serious security concerns to remain in the country.
Those broader failures give the administration’s urgency real weight. But urgency is not a license to skip the steps Congress required.
The April 8 order freezes the termination while the court resolves the underlying claims. No timeline for a final ruling was specified. The administration can appeal, pursue expedited proceedings, or wait for the merits phase to play out.
DHS’s public posture, calling Murphy a “radical” and a “judicial activist”, signals the department views this as a fight worth escalating. Whether that escalation takes the form of an appeal to the First Circuit or a broader push to limit nationwide injunctions remains to be seen.
For Ethiopian TPS holders, the immediate effect is simple: their status holds, for now. For the administration, it is another courtroom obstacle in a long campaign to enforce the plain meaning of “temporary.” And for the rest of us, it is another reminder that the most consequential immigration policy in America is increasingly made not by Congress, not by the executive branch, but by individual federal judges.
When “temporary” can mean forever and one district court judge can freeze a national policy, the system is not working the way anyone designed it.
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