A federal judge in Boston has cleared the Trump administration to terminate Temporary Protected Status for more than 5,000 Ethiopian nationals, removing the final legal obstacle to ending TPS designations for all 13 countries the administration has targeted, according to CNN.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy ruled Tuesday, Aug. 18, rejecting claims from Ethiopian nationals and the advocacy group African Communities Together that the Department of Homeland Security had unlawfully moved to terminate the protections, per CNN. The ruling marked a reversal for Murphy, who had blocked the termination in April on the grounds that DHS had disregarded statutory procedures, according to the American Tribune. The reversal followed a June U.S. Supreme Court ruling that curtailed lower courts’ ability to review DHS’s TPS terminations, the outlet reports.
TPS has allowed Ethiopian nationals to live and work legally in the U.S. since 2022, when the Biden administration granted the status amid armed conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, according to Al Jazeera. DHS General Counsel James Percival wrote on social media that “ALL TPS terminations are now IN EFFECT,” according to the American Tribune. The State Department currently advises against travel to Ethiopia over “unrest, crime, kidnapping, terrorism [and] landmines,” Al Jazeera reports. American Tribune
Murphy said he would allow plaintiffs to continue litigating whether DHS’s action was motivated by racial or national-origin discrimination, according to HuffPost.
