The last judge standing in the way of ending Temporary Protected Status blinked this week. U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy lifted his stay on Ethiopia's TPS termination Tuesday, and with that single order, every TPS termination the Trump administration has pushed through is now in effect. DHS says roughly 1 million migrants just lost a status some of them had held for decades.
What Judge Murphy actually did
Murphy, an appointee of President Biden, had been the one remaining district judge blocking a TPS termination anywhere in the country. On Tuesday, he lifted the administrative stay that had kept Ethiopia's TPS designation alive, ending a fight that had bounced from his courtroom up to the Supreme Court and back down again.
The John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse in Boston, home to the federal district court where Judge Brian Murphy issued Tuesday's order. (Photo: ajay_suresh, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
The case, African Communities Together v. Mullin, was largely decided before Murphy ever ruled. The Supreme Court found 6-3 in June that a TPS termination is the executive branch's call, not something federal courts get to second-guess. Murphy's stay was living on borrowed time after that, and Tuesday it ran out.
Why DHS is calling this a "grift"
DHS General Counsel James Percival didn't wait to gloat. He posted a meme Tuesday declaring himself "marked safe from TPS judges today," and a day later called the whole program a "bait and switch" and "a grift on the American people" in a post on X.
He has a point about the calendar. Somalia's TPS designation dates back to 1991. Haiti's began after the 2010 earthquake. Syria and Haiti's most recent extensions lapsed in July, and Ethiopia's, the last one standing, was only granted in 2022. DHS says more than a dozen countries in all have now had their designations terminated, covering everyone from Afghans and Nicaraguans to Nepalis and Hondurans.
DHS didn't mince words on its own account either. "EVERY TPS TERMINATION IS NOW IN EFFECT," the agency posted Wednesday. "For decades, TEMPORARY Protected Status was used as a defacto amnesty program. Those days are OVER. Those with terminated TPS are now in our nation ILLEGALLY. They must leave now or be swiftly DEPORTED."
What happens to the roughly 1 million people affected
The Washington Times reports the practical result is that roughly 1 million migrants who had deportation protection under TPS no longer have it. DHS is pointing them toward the CBP Home mobile app, which offers a narrow window to leave on their own terms instead of getting picked up.
ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officers escort a detainee to an ICE Air charter flight. File photo illustrating ICE's removal process. (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, public domain)
Under that program, non-criminal illegal aliens who register their intent to depart and pass vetting get a $2,600 exit bonus, free travel arrangements, and forgiveness of any fines for failing to leave earlier, and DHS says it will hold off on detaining them before their scheduled departure.
The one thing still in court
Murphy didn't hand DHS a completely clean sweep. He let one claim from the Ethiopian plaintiffs survive, a Fifth Amendment equal protection argument that the termination targeted them because of their race or national origin, according to the order itself. Attorneys who've tracked the case say that claim faces long odds, and either way, TPS stays terminated while it plays out.
That's the headline here. Four presidents let TPS quietly harden into something closer to permanent status for people from more than a dozen countries. It took a Supreme Court ruling and one holdout judge finally standing down to put "temporary" back to meaning what it says.
