U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston lifted a temporary hold on the Temporary Protected Status program for Ethiopian nationals on Tuesday, handing the Trump administration a significant legal victory in its push to end deportation protections for immigrants from countries the Department of Homeland Security says no longer qualify.
DHS wasted no time. Within hours, the department posted on X: “ALL TPS terminations are now IN EFFECT. Those with terminated TPS should leave NOW. If they don’t, we will DEPORT them.”
The ruling in African Communities Together v. Markwayne Mullin removes the last major judicial obstacle to enforcing TPS terminations the administration has pursued across multiple countries. Combined with a Supreme Court ruling in June that cleared the way to end protections for thousands of Haitian and Syrian nationals, the federal judiciary has now largely sided with the executive branch’s authority to decide when conditions abroad no longer justify sheltering foreign nationals from deportation.
Judge Murphy’s decision was not a total loss for the plaintiffs. He issued a split ruling, finding that DHS has the authority to terminate TPS designations and that individual beneficiaries are not entitled to personal hearings before a nationwide program ends. But he also found that the plaintiffs, led by the advocacy group African Communities Together, presented a plausible case that the government ended protections due to racial and national-origin discrimination, potentially violating the Fifth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
Murphy allowed that discrimination claim to move forward.
That surviving claim may generate headlines down the road. But its practical effect right now is limited. The administrative stay that had blocked enforcement is gone. Ethiopian nationals whose TPS has been terminated now face the prospect of deportation, as Fox News Digital reported.
Congress created Temporary Protected Status in 1990 as a humanitarian program. The idea was simple: when a foreign country faces armed conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary conditions, the United States can temporarily shield nationals of that country already living here from deportation. The key word was always “temporary.”
Ethiopia was first designated for TPS on December 12, 2022, following ongoing armed conflict and severe climatic shocks. But the Secretary of Homeland Security terminated that designation last December, setting an effective end date of February 13, 2026. DHS determined that conditions in Ethiopia had improved and that the country no longer met the statutory criteria.
That termination sparked immediate legal challenges. A series of temporary court-ordered pauses followed, including the administrative stay Judge Murphy himself had previously issued. Those pauses kept the program alive on paper even as the administration insisted conditions on the ground no longer warranted protection.
Now, with Murphy’s hold lifted, the February 2026 end date stands. The administration has made clear it intends to enforce it.
The Ethiopia ruling fits a broader pattern. The Supreme Court’s June decision on Haiti and Syria TPS set the legal framework, and lower courts have followed. Federal judges have cleared the administration to end TPS protections for Burma and South Sudan as well, applying similar reasoning about executive authority over immigration designations.
In another case, a federal judge cleared the path for the administration to end TPS protections for Somali nationals, following the same Supreme Court precedent. That decision reinforced the principle that the executive branch, not the courts, decides when foreign conditions have changed enough to end temporary shelter.
Even judges appointed by President Biden have joined the trend. The First Circuit overturned TPS blocking orders in a ruling that drew attention precisely because the judges who sided with the administration were not political allies, they simply read the statute and found the executive branch was within its rights.
That string of decisions has steadily narrowed the legal ground available to advocacy groups trying to keep TPS designations alive through litigation.
The one thread left dangling in the Ethiopia case is the plaintiffs’ argument that the administration terminated TPS based on racial or national-origin animus rather than an honest assessment of country conditions. Judge Murphy found enough in the record to let that claim proceed, citing the Fifth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
It is worth noting what that finding does and does not mean. Murphy did not rule that discrimination occurred. He ruled that the plaintiffs had stated a plausible enough case to keep the courthouse doors open on that specific question. Discovery, motions, and potentially a trial lie ahead, a process that could take months or years.
Meanwhile, the termination itself is no longer blocked. The discrimination claim is a legal sidecar, not a roadblock. Ethiopian nationals with terminated TPS cannot point to a pending lawsuit as a shield against removal proceedings.
DHS’s post on X left no room for ambiguity. The department declared all TPS terminations in effect and warned those with terminated status to leave voluntarily or face deportation. The language was direct, even by the standards of an administration that has made immigration enforcement a signature priority.
The Supreme Court had already delivered major wins for the administration on asylum and deportation policy, establishing that the executive branch holds broad discretion over who stays and who goes when statutory conditions change. Murphy’s ruling in Boston extends that logic to the Ethiopian TPS population specifically.
For the administration, the legal trajectory is clear. Court after court has affirmed that TPS is what Congress said it was, temporary, and that the executive branch has the authority to end designations when it determines conditions have improved. The judiciary has declined, repeatedly, to convert a temporary humanitarian program into a permanent residency guarantee.
Separately, the Fifth Circuit barred lower court judges from releasing migrants before deportation, further reinforcing the administration’s enforcement posture across the federal court system.
Several facts remain unclear. The exact number of Ethiopian nationals currently holding TPS and directly affected by this ruling has not been publicly stated. The specific conditions DHS cited as having improved in Ethiopia have not been detailed in the court filings made public so far. And the next procedural steps on the surviving discrimination claim, including any discovery schedule or trial date, have not been announced.
What is clear is the bottom line: the legal barriers to TPS termination for Ethiopian nationals are gone. The administration has the authority, the court’s blessing, and, judging by its public statements, the will to act.
Congress designed TPS to be temporary. After years of legal wrangling, the courts have finally told the government it can treat the program that way.
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