A federal judge in Massachusetts cleared the way for the Trump administration to strip Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from 1,100 Somalis living in the United States on Aug. 14.
The ruling from U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston came down on Friday, months after four Somali TPS holders and two advocacy groups—African Communities Together and Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans—filed a lawsuit on March 9 in an attempt to stop the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from terminating the TPS designation for Somalis.
The lawsuit temporarily blocked DHS from moving forward with the termination while legal challenges were underway.
The court acknowledged on Friday the “life-altering consequences of this decision for the affected Somali TPS beneficiaries” as it cleared the way for the Trump administration to move forward with its plan to end Somalia’s TPS status.
“If the government wishes to remove or detain Somali people who previously held TPS, those enforcement actions will be subject to the protections of the Due Process Clause,” Burroughs wrote in the order on Friday.
“The Court is aware of no precedent that would allow it to find a protected liberty interest in being free from the prospect of immigration enforcement.”
The order also pushed back on the plaintiffs’ accusation that President Donald Trump and his administration made statements that were “racially overt” and directly targeted the Somali people.
“Though Plaintiffs lay out a strong case for why the at-issue statements were racist … the Court cannot discern a path to concluding that Plaintiffs will succeed on the merits of this claim,” Burroughs wrote, citing Mullin v. Doe, a June 2026 Supreme Court decision “which included a constitutional race-discrimination claim.”
TPS allows people from a select list of countries to live and work in the United States when it’s unsafe for them to return to their own country due to ongoing dangerous conditions such as war or a natural disaster.
Somalia was first placed on the TPS list in 1991.
The country’s designation on the list was extended and renewed until Jan. 14, 2026, when former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that Somalia was going to be terminated from TPS in mid-March.
“Temporary means temporary,” Noem told The Epoch Times via email on Jan. 13.
“Country conditions in Somalia have improved to the point that it no longer meets the law’s requirement for Temporary Protected Status,” she said. “Further, allowing Somali nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to our national interests. We are putting Americans first.”
Zachary Stieber and Aldgra Fredly contributed to this report.
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