A federal judge appointed by Barack Obama issued a fresh order blocking the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for Somali nationals, a move DHS's top lawyer called "defiance, obstruction, and delay" in open conflict with the Supreme Court.

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs entered the administrative stay from her Massachusetts courtroom after plaintiffs filed an amended complaint and emergency motion the day before. The new complaint rewrites the legal challenge around the Fifth Amendment, alleging the administration's decision to revoke Somalia's TPS designation violated both due process and equal protection guarantees. Burroughs declared the TPS termination "void" for now while she decides whether the constitutional claims justify a longer pause.

The order lands weeks after the Supreme Court's June ruling in Mullin v. Doe sharply limited lower courts' ability to block TPS terminations based on non-constitutional claims. That decision was supposed to clear the runway for the administration to wind down the program for several countries. Instead, the plaintiffs, led by the advocacy group African Communities Together, retooled their lawsuit around constitutional grounds, and Burroughs gave them what they wanted within a day of the filing.

DHS counsel accuses Burroughs of a pattern, not an isolated ruling

DHS General Counsel James Percival did not hold back. He took to X shortly after the order came down, framing the stay as part of a broader pattern of judicial resistance to the administration's immigration agenda.

Fox News Digital reported Percival's post in full:

"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's use of "yet another" is pointed. Burroughs first entered an administrative stay on March 13 preventing the Somalia TPS termination from taking effect. That original stay kept the case frozen while litigation played out. Now, even after the Supreme Court narrowed the legal ground available to TPS challengers, the same judge found a new basis to block the same policy, this time on constitutional rather than statutory grounds.

The pattern extends beyond Burroughs. Two other federal judges, Brian Murphy and Patti Saris, issued their own administrative stays blocking TPS terminations for Ethiopia and South Sudan. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed both of those stays, relying on the Supreme Court's Mullin decision. The appellate court, in other words, told lower courts the law does not support what they were doing.

Burroughs appears to have read the same signals and chosen a different route. By anchoring her new stay to Fifth Amendment claims rather than the statutory arguments Mullin foreclosed, she sidestepped the very precedent that undid her colleagues' orders. Whether that maneuver holds up on appeal is an open question. That she attempted it at all is the detail DHS wants the public to notice.

Iowa's solicitor general calls the amended complaint legally deficient on every count

Eric Wessan, Iowa's solicitor general, offered a detailed public critique of the amended complaint and Burroughs' response. Writing on X, Wessan laid out his assessment of the five claims in the new filing. He characterized four of them as foreclosed by the Mullin ruling and the fifth as "frivolous."

Wessan described the stay itself as a novel legal mechanism:

"I looked at the amended complaint in the Somalia TPS case. 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."

He went further, arguing that even without the procedural history weighing against the plaintiffs, the substance of their claims could not clear the bar for emergency relief:

"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. 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."

Wessan is not a party to the case. Iowa has no direct stake in Somalia's TPS designation. But state solicitors general have increasingly weighed in on federal immigration disputes, and his public commentary reflects a growing frustration among conservative legal figures with what they see as lower courts slow-walking or outright resisting Supreme Court directives. It is a frustration that mirrors the broader tension between the administration's enforcement priorities and Obama-appointed federal judges who have repeatedly intervened to halt Trump-era policy changes.

Plaintiffs allege racial motivation behind TPS revocation

The amended complaint filed by African Communities Together and other plaintiffs makes a blunt accusation: the Trump administration's decision to end TPS for Somalia was predetermined and racially motivated.

The filing points to a November 2025 Truth Social post in which President Trump announced the end of TPS, months before DHS completed the review process the law requires. The plaintiffs argue that timeline proves the agency's decision was effectively made before it went through the motions of an official review, depriving Somali TPS holders of the fair process the Fifth Amendment's due process clause guarantees.

On the equal protection front, the complaint cites Trump's past remarks describing Somali immigrants as "criminals," "gang members," and "low IQ," along with statements that he doesn't "want them in our country" and to "send them back." The filing contrasts those remarks with what it describes as the administration's preferential treatment of white immigrants, specifically alleging the administration "expressed preferences for white immigrants as 'nice' and welcome in the U.S. and created protections for white Afrikaner refugees from South Africa."

Those allegations come from the plaintiffs' complaint, not from independent findings. Fox News Digital reached out to African Communities Together for comment; no response was reported. The claims remain contested, and the administration has not publicly addressed the specific allegations in the amended filing beyond Percival's broader characterization of the litigation as obstruction.

Whether the constitutional framing survives judicial scrutiny is the central legal question. The Supreme Court's Mullin ruling closed the door on statutory challenges to TPS terminations. But constitutional claims, due process, equal protection, occupy different legal terrain. The plaintiffs are betting that terrain is solid enough to keep the case alive. Wessan and Percival are betting it is not, and that Burroughs is using constitutional language as a workaround for a result she was going to reach regardless.

The broader pattern is hard to ignore. Across multiple TPS cases, the administration has clashed with lower courts over immigration enforcement, and the cycle has repeated: district judge blocks policy, appellate court reverses, plaintiffs refile on new grounds, and another stay appears. The First Circuit has already shown it will enforce the Mullin ruling. Whether it reaches the same conclusion when the claims are dressed in constitutional rather than statutory clothing will determine whether this latest stay lasts days or months.

Temporary Protected Status, explained for the rest of the country

TPS is a federal program that allows nationals from designated countries to live and work in the United States when conditions in their home country, armed conflict, natural disaster, or other extraordinary circumstances, make safe return impossible. The designation is temporary by statute, but in practice, some countries have held TPS status for decades. Somalia has been on the list for years.

The Trump administration has moved to end TPS designations for multiple countries, arguing the program has become a backdoor to permanent residency rather than the short-term shelter Congress intended. Opponents counter that conditions in countries like Somalia remain dangerous and that revoking protections would expose hundreds of thousands of people to deportation.

The legal fights have followed a predictable track. District judges, often appointees of Democratic presidents, issue stays. Appellate courts, guided by the Supreme Court's Mullin framework, reverse them. The administration presses forward. Advocacy groups refile. And the people caught in the middle, Somali nationals who have built lives in the United States under TPS, remain in limbo while lawyers and judges trade motions.

That limbo is the product of a system in which the executive branch sets immigration policy, the judiciary reviews it, and the two branches increasingly operate on different assumptions about what the law allows. The Supreme Court tried to settle the question in Mullin. Judge Burroughs' latest order suggests the lower courts have not all received the message, or have decided to read it differently.

The administration's frustration is not abstract. DHS has publicly named the judges it believes are defying the high court. Percival's post did not speak in generalities; he named Burroughs specifically and described her conduct as part of a deliberate strategy. That kind of direct, public confrontation between a cabinet agency's top lawyer and a sitting federal judge is unusual, and it signals the administration views this not as a routine legal disagreement but as institutional resistance to a democratic mandate on immigration.

Conservative legal observers have echoed that view. The broader push for accountability within institutions that resist executive authority has become a defining feature of the current political moment. Whether the target is a nonprofit, a federal agency, or a district court, the administration and its allies have signaled they intend to name names and force public confrontation rather than accept quiet obstruction.

What happens next depends on the First Circuit, again

The immediate question is whether the First Circuit will treat Burroughs' new stay the way it treated the Murphy and Saris stays: as an overreach by a lower court that the Supreme Court has already corrected. The constitutional framing gives the plaintiffs a plausible argument that Mullin does not apply directly, since that ruling addressed non-constitutional claims. But Wessan's analysis, that even the constitutional claims cannot meet the "high bar for interim relief", suggests the administration and its allies will push hard for a rapid reversal.

If the First Circuit agrees with Wessan and lifts the stay, the Somalia TPS termination moves forward. If it finds the constitutional claims merit further review, the case could drag on for months, keeping Somali TPS holders in protected status while the courts work through the merits. Either outcome will set a precedent for how lower courts handle the next wave of TPS challenges, and there will be a next wave.

The administration has faced legal setbacks before and adjusted its strategy. The question now is whether the judiciary's resistance to TPS terminations represents a legitimate constitutional check or a rearguard action by judges who disagree with the policy and are searching for any available legal hook to block it.

Percival and Wessan have made clear which answer they believe is correct. Burroughs, by issuing her stay within a day of the amended filing, has made clear she sees it differently. The First Circuit will have the next word. The Supreme Court may eventually have the last one.

When the highest court in the country draws a line and a district judge finds a way around it within weeks, the issue is no longer just about immigration policy. It is about whether court orders mean what they say, and for whom.