Trump immigration agenda faces setback as Obama-appointed judge issues fresh TPS stay

A Massachusetts federal judge has once again blocked the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somalia, issuing a new administrative stay after plaintiffs rewrote their lawsuit around constitutional claims just days after a federal appeals court threw out similar stays terminating TPS for Ethiopia and South Sudan.

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, appointed by former President Barack Obama, issued the administrative stay Friday after African Communities Together and other plaintiffs filed an amended complaint alleging the Trump administration violated the Fifth Amendment by terminating Somalia’s TPS designation based on racial and national-origin discrimination.

The plaintiffs filed an amended complaint and emergency motion on Thursday in a renewed bid to keep Somalia’s TPS protections alive after the Supreme Court’s June ruling in Mullin v. Doe sharply limited lower courts’ ability to block TPS terminations.

Burroughs’ latest order has intensified growing criticism over whether district judges are using administrative stays to work around higher court rulings. It comes just days after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed similar administrative stays issued by U.S. District Judges Brian Murphy and Patti Saris, who had temporarily delayed the Trump administration’s TPS terminations for Ethiopia and South Sudan.

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The First Circuit based its rulings on the Supreme Court’s Mullin decision, which ruled lower courts generally cannot block TPS terminations based on non-constitutional claims.

The latest order drew an immediate rebuke from DHS General Counsel James Percival, who accused Burroughs of continuing a pattern of judicial obstruction.

“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 wrote on X.

Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan argued Burroughs’ order improperly grants emergency relief despite what he described as legally deficient claims.

“I looked at the amended complaint in the Somalia TPS case,” Wessan wrote on X. “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.”

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Wessan argued that the order “turns the law upside down,” writing that four of the lawsuit’s five claims are foreclosed by the Supreme Court’s decision in Mullin and describing the remaining claim as “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,” Wessan wrote. “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.”

The plaintiffs contend, however, that their amended complaint presents a fundamentally different case than those recently rejected by the First Circuit.

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The amended lawsuit argues the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to revoke Somalia’s TPS designation was predetermined, pointing to President Donald Trump’s November 2025 Truth Social post announcing the end of TPS months before DHS had completed the review process. Plaintiffs argue that deprived Somali TPS holders of the fair process guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause because the decision had effectively already been made before the agency completed the review required by law.

The complaint also alleges the administration violated the Fifth Amendment’s Equal Protection guarantee by targeting Somali nationals based on race and national origin. It cites Trump’s past remarks describing Somali immigrants as “criminals,” “gang members,” and “low IQ,” as well as his statements that he doesn’t “want them in our country” and to “send them back.”

“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 wrote.

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Burroughs has presided over the Somalia TPS litigation since earlier this year. On March 13, she initially entered an administrative stay preventing the Somalia TPS termination from taking effect while the litigation proceeded.

Fox News Digital reached out to African Communities Together for comment.