Two Biden-appointed federal appeals judges joined a Trump appointee to reverse lower court orders that had blocked the administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for migrants from Ethiopia and South Sudan, a result that even the administration’s critics will struggle to frame as partisan overreach.
The First Circuit Court of Appeals issued a pair of rulings reversing orders from U.S. District Judges Brian Murphy and Patti Saris, both of whom had moved to freeze the TPS terminations late last week. The appellate panel, Judges Julie Rikelman and Seth Aframe, both Biden appointees, alongside Trump appointee Joshua Dunlap, found that the lower court orders directly conflicted with the Supreme Court’s June decision in Mullin v. Doe.
That unanimous outcome is worth pausing on. The administration did not need a friendly bench to win. It needed judges willing to follow what the Supreme Court already said. It got both.
The June ruling in Mullin v. Doe established a clear boundary: federal courts cannot block TPS terminations based on non-constitutional claims. The First Circuit majority cited that holding directly, writing that Mullin “held that ‘the TPS statute’s judicial-review bar applies to all non-constitutional claims’ challenging the Secretary of [Homeland Security’s] determination with respect to the termination of a TPS designation.”
The Supreme Court left open a narrow door. Courts could still hear claims alleging actual constitutional violations. But Judges Murphy and Saris did not walk through that door in the usual way. Instead, they issued procedural orders designed to preserve the status quo while considering whether plaintiffs, led by the New York-based immigrant advocacy group African Communities Together, could amend their complaints to pursue constitutional theories.
In practical terms, the district judges froze TPS terminations on the basis of claims the Supreme Court had already placed off-limits, while gesturing toward constitutional arguments that had not yet been formally made. The First Circuit saw through the maneuver.
The administration did not wait for the appeals court to weigh in before making its displeasure known. DHS General Counsel James Percival took to X after each district court order, characterizing Judge Murphy’s action as “mutiny against the Supreme Court” and Judge Saris’ ruling as “open defiance” of the justices’ decision.
That language is sharp. But the First Circuit’s own reasoning suggests it was not unfounded. When a three-judge panel, two-thirds of it appointed by the opposing party’s president, reverses your order on the grounds that it contradicts binding Supreme Court precedent, the word “defiance” starts to look less like rhetoric and more like description.
A DHS spokesperson welcomed the rulings as “a win for the rule of law and common sense,” and offered a broader critique of the TPS program itself: “Temporary Protected Status is exactly that, temporary. For too long, TPS has been allowed to function as a de facto amnesty program despite Congress never intending it to be permanent.”
Fox News Digital reported that it reached out to the offices of both Judges Murphy and Saris for comment. No responses were noted.
Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan framed the rulings as a natural extension of the Supreme Court’s earlier decision. He told Fox News Digital:
“These are clear wins for President Trump following his big win at the U.S. Supreme Court, explaining that district courts are not supposed to second guess TPS terminations, and even as this plays out, we’re moving towards the end of this litigation because district courts should not be hearing these disputes, and that’s what the Supreme Court said.”
Wessan also addressed the procedural gambit the district judges had attempted, allowing plaintiffs time to amend their complaints while keeping the blocking orders in place. His response was blunt:
“If they want to let the plaintiffs amend their complaint, they’re allowed to do that, but in the meantime, TPS is over.”
That distinction matters. The First Circuit did not say plaintiffs can never raise constitutional claims. It said they cannot use the possibility of future constitutional claims as a basis for freezing government action that the Supreme Court has already said courts lack authority to block on statutory grounds.
The back-to-back district court orders, and their swift reversal, fit a broader pattern that has defined the legal landscape around the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. District judges issue injunctions or blocking orders. The administration appeals. Higher courts reverse, often citing precedent the lower courts appeared to sidestep.
The dynamic has played out across multiple circuits and policy areas. The Fifth Circuit recently barred lower court judges from releasing migrants before deportation, another ruling that reinforced the administration’s enforcement authority against district-level resistance.
Plaintiffs in the TPS cases alleged that DHS violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Constitution. They claimed the agency failed to properly assess conditions in Ethiopia and South Sudan, and that the termination decisions were motivated by racial discrimination. Those are serious allegations, but the Supreme Court in Mullin already determined that the statutory claims cannot serve as a basis for judicial intervention. The constitutional claims remain theoretically available, but they have not yet been formally pleaded in amended complaints.
Meanwhile, other federal judges have permanently blocked Trump executive orders on different grounds, showing that the judiciary is far from unified in its approach to the administration’s legal agenda.
Congress created Temporary Protected Status as a humanitarian shield for foreign nationals whose home countries faced armed conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary conditions. The statute gave the DHS secretary discretion to designate countries and, critically, to terminate those designations when conditions changed.
In practice, TPS designations have been renewed for decades in some cases. Migrants from certain countries have held TPS status for so long that the “temporary” label became a legal fiction. The Trump administration’s position, that the secretary has broad authority to end designations, rests on both the statute’s plain text and the Supreme Court’s interpretation in Mullin.
The DHS spokesperson’s characterization of TPS as “a de facto amnesty program” reflects a view held widely on the right: that a program designed for short-term emergency relief has been stretched into a permanent residency pathway that Congress never authorized.
African Communities Together, the lead plaintiff in both cases, represents immigrant communities that would be directly affected by TPS terminations. Individual TPS recipients from Ethiopia and South Sudan were also named as plaintiffs. Their legal position now depends on whether they can successfully amend their complaints to state viable constitutional claims, a higher bar than the statutory arguments the Supreme Court has already foreclosed.
The administration has also faced mixed results in cases involving sanctuary policies, where even Trump-appointed judges have sometimes ruled against DOJ positions, underscoring that the legal battles are fought case by case rather than along clean partisan lines.
It would be easy to dismiss the First Circuit rulings as a product of a favorable bench. The composition of the panel makes that argument impossible. Two of the three judges were appointed by President Biden. They ruled against the position favored by progressive advocacy groups and in favor of the Trump administration’s enforcement authority.
That unanimity speaks to the strength of the Supreme Court’s holding in Mullin v. Doe. When the law is clear enough that judges appointed by both parties reach the same conclusion, the district judges who reached the opposite result have some explaining to do.
Percival, the DHS General Counsel, argued that the public needs to know which judges are in “open defiance” of the Supreme Court on immigration. Whether or not one shares his taste for public confrontation, the First Circuit’s rulings lend his underlying point considerable weight.
The Trump administration has notched courtroom wins across several fronts in recent months, but this one carries a particular sting for opponents, because the judges who handed it to them were not the administration’s allies by appointment.
The First Circuit’s rulings do not end the litigation entirely. Plaintiffs may still attempt to amend their complaints to assert constitutional claims, allegations of racial discrimination, for instance, that Mullin left open as a potential basis for judicial review. Whether those claims can survive scrutiny on the merits is an open question.
But the practical effect is immediate. The blocking orders are gone. TPS terminations for Ethiopia and South Sudan may proceed. And district judges across the country now have an appellate precedent, issued by a majority-Biden-appointed panel, reinforcing that they cannot use procedural creativity to circumvent what the Supreme Court has plainly said.
Several questions remain unanswered. The exact docket numbers for the First Circuit proceedings have not been publicly identified in available reporting. The specific districts where Murphy and Saris sit were not specified. And whether Iowa’s involvement signals a broader coalition of states supporting the administration’s TPS terminations is unclear.
What is clear is that the legal ground has shifted. The Supreme Court drew a line in Mullin. Two district judges tried to erase it. And a panel that included two of their own ideological allies drew it right back.
When even the judges your side appointed tell you you’re wrong, it might be time to stop blaming the bench and start reading the statute.
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