A federal judge on Tuesday cleared the way for the Trump administration to end temporary deportation protections for more than 5,000 Ethiopians living in the United States, lifting the last judicial barrier to the move.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston ruled that the Department of Homeland Security could terminate Ethiopia’s designation under the Temporary Protected Status program, or TPS, which allows eligible migrants from countries facing war, disasters or other extraordinary conditions to live and work legally in the United States.
The decision follows a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that allowed the administration to end similar protections for thousands of people from Haiti and Syria. That ruling, backed by the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, sharply limited lower courts’ ability to review the administration’s efforts to terminate TPS designations.
DHS General Counsel James Percival welcomed Tuesday’s decision, saying in a social media post that all TPS terminations were now in effect.
The decision affects more than 5,000 Ethiopians who had been protected from deportation under a designation first introduced by former President Joe Biden’s administration in 2022 amid armed conflict and a worsening humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia.
The Trump administration announced in December that it would end Ethiopia’s TPS designation, arguing that conditions in the country had improved sufficiently for nationals to return safely.
Murphy initially blocked the move in April, finding that DHS had failed to follow required procedures and had offered what he described as a “pretextual” justification for ending the protections.
Following the Supreme Court’s intervention in related TPS cases, Murphy temporarily kept protections for Ethiopians in place while considering additional legal arguments raised by migrants and the advocacy group African Communities Together.
The plaintiffs argued, among other claims, that the law creating TPS gave the authority to terminate protections to the attorney general rather than DHS. Murphy rejected that argument, in line with recent rulings involving TPS protections for people from South Sudan, Somalia and Myanmar.
However, the judge allowed one part of the lawsuit to continue. The plaintiffs may still pursue their claim that the administration’s decision was motivated by racial or national-origin discrimination in violation of the Fifth Amendment.
African Communities Together criticized the ruling, warning that serious instability remains in Ethiopia.
“The crisis in Ethiopia is still ongoing, and this decision puts the lives of thousands of Ethiopians living in the U.S. at severe risk,” said Diana Konaté, the group’s deputy executive director for policy and advocacy.
The plaintiffs argue that Washington failed to adequately account for continuing security risks in Ethiopia and allege that the administration has disproportionately targeted deportation protections covering migrants from non-white and non-European countries.