A federal judge in Massachusetts issued a new administrative stay blocking the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for Somalia, just days after the First Circuit Court of Appeals cleared the way for similar terminations involving Ethiopia and South Sudan.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, an Obama appointee, entered the order Friday after plaintiffs led by African Communities Together filed an amended complaint and emergency motion raising constitutional claims under the Fifth Amendment. The move effectively declares the Somalia TPS termination “void” while the court sorts through the new allegations, Fox News Digital reported.
The timing matters. The Supreme Court ruled in June in Mullin v. Doe that lower courts generally cannot block TPS terminations based on non-constitutional claims. The First Circuit then relied on that ruling to reverse administrative stays that two other district judges, Brian Murphy and Patti Saris, had issued to protect TPS holders from Ethiopia and South Sudan.
Burroughs’ new stay arrives just as those barriers fell. And it rests on a legal theory her critics say was engineered specifically to get around Mullin.
The amended complaint filed Thursday alleges the administration’s decision to revoke Somalia’s TPS designation was predetermined and racially motivated. Plaintiffs point to a November 2025 Truth Social post in which President Trump announced the end of TPS months before DHS had completed its review process.
The complaint also cites past presidential 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.” Plaintiffs argue these statements, combined with what they describe as favorable treatment of white Afrikaner refugees from South Africa, show the administration violated the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee.
From the amended complaint, as described in court filings:
“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.”
The plaintiffs further argue the predetermined nature of the decision deprived Somali TPS holders of the fair process guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause.
DHS General Counsel James Percival did not hold back. He took to X to denounce the order as part of a broader pattern of lower-court resistance to the administration’s lawful authority over immigration.
“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 growing sense within the administration that certain district judges are treating Supreme Court rulings as suggestions rather than binding precedent. This is not an isolated grievance. Other judges have drawn similar criticism for shielding TPS holders from Ethiopia despite clear appellate direction.
Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan offered a more granular legal critique. He reviewed the amended complaint and posted his analysis on X, describing the stay as a “novel” procedural maneuver and the underlying claims as legally insufficient.
“I looked at the amended complaint in the Somalia TPS case. The district judge has entered a novel ‘administrative stay’ to sort out the claims. She has declared the TPS termination ‘void’ for now, while deciding whether any of the claims can justify a more permanent pause.”
Wessan identified five claims in the amended lawsuit. He described four of them as foreclosed by the Supreme Court’s Mullin decision and called the fifth “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. This is very bad. I hope that, with time to review, Judge Burroughs vacates her administrative stay to allow the correct status quo to continue.”
Judge Burroughs first entered an administrative stay in the Somalia TPS case on March 13, preventing the termination from taking effect while litigation proceeded. That initial stay came before the Supreme Court’s Mullin ruling and before the First Circuit began reversing similar orders from other judges.
The sequence tells a story. The Supreme Court ruled. The First Circuit acted on that ruling and cleared the path for TPS terminations in the Ethiopia and South Sudan cases. And within days, Burroughs issued a fresh stay on different grounds, constitutional claims that were not part of the original complaint.
Whether this represents legitimate constitutional litigation or a procedural workaround designed to circumvent Mullin is now the central question. Wessan argued the claims cannot meet the high bar for interim relief. Percival went further, framing it as open defiance of the high court.
The broader pattern extends well beyond TPS. Federal judges have repeatedly intervened to block executive immigration enforcement actions, from ordering the release of a convicted plane hijacker despite an active deportation order to striking down ICE operational policies.
Each case follows a familiar arc: the administration acts within what it considers its statutory authority, a district judge finds a reason to halt the action, and months of litigation follow while the policy remains frozen.
The legal strategy in the Somalia case appears calculated. The original complaint presumably rested on statutory and administrative-law claims, the kind Mullin swept off the table. When the First Circuit enforced Mullin against the Ethiopia and South Sudan stays, plaintiffs pivoted to constitutional ground.
The Fifth Amendment claims allege both due process and equal protection violations. The due process theory holds that a predetermined decision denied Somali TPS holders a fair review. The equal protection theory holds that racial animus drove the termination.
These are serious constitutional provisions. But invoking them does not automatically entitle plaintiffs to emergency relief. As Wessan noted, even a fresh lawsuit raising these claims would face a high bar for interim relief, and this lawsuit carries the “baggage” of prior proceedings shaped by a different legal landscape.
The question is whether Judge Burroughs will sustain this stay once she has time to fully evaluate the amended claims, or whether the First Circuit will again step in. Other Obama- and Biden-appointed judges have issued sweeping orders against administration immigration policies that were later narrowed or reversed on appeal.
The current landscape is fractured. The First Circuit reversed the stays protecting Ethiopian and South Sudanese TPS holders, meaning those terminations can proceed. But Somalia’s TPS designation remains blocked by Burroughs’ new order.
Fox News Digital reached out to African Communities Together for comment. No response was noted.
The administration’s position is straightforward: TPS terminations are executive decisions that the Supreme Court has now placed largely beyond the reach of lower-court injunctions, at least on non-constitutional grounds. The plaintiffs’ counter is that this particular termination was tainted by racial bias and procedural bad faith, claims that, if credited, would fall outside Mullin‘s framework.
This is the kind of case that tests whether constitutional claims can be deployed as an all-purpose override whenever a statutory challenge fails. If any plaintiff can repackage a policy dispute as an equal protection case by citing inflammatory presidential rhetoric, the Mullin ruling’s practical force shrinks considerably.
The administration has faced similar judicial resistance across multiple policy areas, from military personnel decisions to domestic spending reforms. In nearly every instance, district judges have found procedural or constitutional hooks to freeze executive action, often for months at a time.
And that delay itself becomes a form of policy. Every month a TPS termination remains blocked, the status quo hardens. Holders remain in the country. Administrative systems adjust. Political pressure builds against enforcement. The pattern repeats across agencies and issue areas, with district courts functioning as a standing brake on executive authority.
The legal merits will be litigated in due course. But the political reality is already clear. A single district judge in Massachusetts can, with a few keystrokes, override a Supreme Court framework and freeze a federal immigration policy affecting an entire nationality of TPS holders, at least until an appellate court says otherwise.
The First Circuit has shown willingness to enforce Mullin. Whether it will do so again here depends on how it evaluates the constitutional claims Burroughs is now entertaining. If those claims are as weak as Wessan argues, the stay should be short-lived. If they gain traction, the Somalia case could become a template for circumventing Mullin across every remaining TPS termination.
Percival called it defiance. Wessan called it legally indefensible. The plaintiffs call it constitutional accountability. The First Circuit will have the next word.
But the pattern is hard to miss. When the Supreme Court closes one door, certain lower courts keep finding windows. And the people who pay the price for that endless delay are the ones who still believe the law means what the highest court says it means.
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