U.S. judge clears path for deportations by lifting stay in Somalia TPS case
A federal judge in Massachusetts has lifted a temporary stay protecting Somali migrants with temporary protected status (TPS), allowing the Trump administration to move forward with deportations.
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U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs issued the ruling Friday in a lawsuit filed by Somali TPS holders. She had imposed the administrative stay after the Supreme Court ruled in a related case that courts lacked authority to review the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) decision to end TPS designations for Haiti and Syria.
Burroughs said the Somali plaintiffs had presented a compelling case but concluded that the Supreme Court’s decision required her to follow what she called the “Mullin prism.” The reference was to the case named for Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, which ended the TPS designations for Haiti and Syria before the Supreme Court.
“Plaintiffs have made a convincing showing that they will suffer irreparable harm if the injunction is withheld … and the balance of hardships and the public interest also favor Plaintiffs, given that the government has made no showing that maintaining TPS status for the duration of this litigation would impose an undue burden,” she wrote.
The United States first designated Somalia for TPS in 1991. The program applies when the government determines that returning migrants to their home country would be unsafe because of a national disaster or civil unrest. The Biden administration most recently redesignated Somalia, citing widespread and continuing armed conflict.
Friday’s decision underscores the obstacles facing nationals of the other countries whose TPS designations have been terminated or are at risk of termination as they seek to challenge those decisions in court.
Burroughs examined several arguments raised by the plaintiffs, many of which were weakened by the Mullin ruling. That decision narrowed the extent to which disparaging statements by Trump administration officials could be used as evidence, despite the plaintiffs’ contention that the remarks demonstrated racial animus.
“Though Plaintiffs lay out a strong case for why the at-issue statements were racist … after Mullin, which included a constitutional race-discrimination claim, the Court cannot discern a path to concluding that Plaintiffs will succeed on the merits of this claim,” she wrote.
The plaintiffs pointed to comments President Trump made about Somali people, including remarks that followed a fraud investigation in Minnesota and widespread immigration raids. About 700 Somali TPS holders are affected by Friday’s ruling.
“This circumstantial evidence clearly shows that Somalia and its people are being targeted, but after Mullin, that is not sufficient to sustain a race-based equal protection claim,” the judge wrote.
