A Tennessee congressman is moving to impeach an Obama-appointed federal judge who issued a stay blocking the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for Somalis, a ruling critics say openly defies the Supreme Court.

Rep. Andy Ogles, a Republican from Tennessee, filed the impeachment resolution against Judge Allison Burroughs of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts after she temporarily halted the administration's effort to end TPS protections for Somali nationals. Burroughs issued the stay on Friday, just months after the Supreme Court's June ruling in Mullin v. Doe sharply limited lower courts' authority to block TPS decisions.

The resolution accuses Burroughs of having "defied the authority of both Federal law and the Supreme Court." Ogles' move is the latest in a series of impeachment resolutions filed by Trump allies in Congress during the president's second term, though previous efforts, including one targeting Judge James Boasberg, have stalled after senior House Republicans argued impeachment was not the most effective tool for reining in judges they consider rogue.

DHS General Counsel James Percival amplified the administration's frustration the same day Burroughs issued her order. In a post on X, Percival wrote:

"There is no serious debate about what is going on in these cases, defiance, obstruction, and delay."

That language tracks closely with the impeachment resolution itself, which frames Burroughs' stay as a deliberate end-run around the high court's recent precedent.

Ogles says Burroughs tried to sidestep the Supreme Court's June ruling

The core of Ogles' argument rests on the Supreme Court's decision in Mullin v. Doe, handed down in June. That ruling significantly curbed lower courts' ability to block executive-branch TPS decisions, a major win for the administration's immigration enforcement agenda. Burroughs, however, entertained an amended complaint from the plaintiff organization African Communities Together, which alleged the Trump administration's decision to end TPS for Somalis was motivated by racial and national-origin discrimination.

The plaintiffs revised their complaint specifically to account for the Mullin ruling, attempting to thread a legal needle by shifting the grounds for their challenge. Ogles' resolution calls this maneuver exactly what it looks like: a workaround.

The resolution states that Burroughs, "in issuing this stay, attempted to get around the Supreme Court's ruling in Mullin v. Doe by entertaining spurious allegations of racial and national-origin discrimination against an Administration that has chosen to not renew a single temporary protected status designation."

That last clause matters. The resolution points out that the administration has declined to renew TPS designations across the board, not just for Somalis. If the policy applies uniformly, the discrimination claim looks less like a legal argument and more like a litigation strategy designed to keep a sympathetic judge in the game.

This is not the first time Burroughs has drawn fire for blocking the administration's Somalia TPS termination. The pattern raises a straightforward question: at what point does a lower-court judge's repeated defiance of a Supreme Court ruling stop looking like judicial independence and start looking like obstruction?

Prior impeachment push against Judge Boasberg collapsed under GOP leadership resistance

Ogles' resolution arrives with a built-in credibility problem, not because of its merits, but because of what happened last time. An earlier impeachment effort targeting Judge Boasberg fell apart after senior House Republicans publicly argued that impeachment was not the most effective way to address judicial overreach. That resistance from leadership left the effort dead on arrival.

Fox News Digital reported earlier this year that conservatives planned to revive their campaign to remove what they called "activist judges" from the bench after receiving what was described as a "green light" from Speaker Johnson. Whether that green light translates into floor action or committee referrals remains an open question. Fox News Digital reached out to the Massachusetts district court for comment on the impeachment threat but did not report receiving a response.

The judiciary's broader resistance to the administration's immigration enforcement has become a flashpoint. Across the federal bench, judges appointed by Democratic presidents have issued a string of orders blocking or delaying Trump-era immigration policies. The administration has responded with increasingly pointed public criticism, with DHS ramping up enforcement operations even as courtroom battles multiply.

Percival's post on X framed the problem in blunt terms, arguing that the public deserves to know which judges are in "open defiance" of the Supreme Court on immigration. That language, coming from the department's top lawyer, not a political operative, signals the administration views these judicial stays as something more serious than routine legal disagreement.

Burroughs was appointed by Obama in 2014 and sits in Massachusetts

Judge Burroughs joined the federal bench in 2014, nominated by then-President Barack Obama. She serves in the District of Massachusetts, a jurisdiction that has produced several rulings hostile to Trump administration immigration policy. Her stay order responded to the amended complaint filed by African Communities Together, a plaintiff organization that argues the TPS termination for Somalis amounts to racial discrimination.

The case highlights a recurring dynamic in immigration litigation. Advocacy groups file suit in friendly jurisdictions, draw sympathetic judges, and secure nationwide injunctions or stays that freeze executive action. When the Supreme Court narrows the legal basis for those orders, as it did in Mullin v. Doe, plaintiffs amend their complaints and try again on different grounds. The cycle continues, and enforcement stalls.

Ogles made his position clear in a statement to Fox News Digital:

"This judicial activist's obstruction of the people's will must be stopped. Judge Burroughs must be impeached."

Whether House leadership shares that urgency is another matter. The Boasberg precedent suggests that Republican leaders prefer tools short of impeachment, oversight hearings, jurisdiction-stripping legislation, or appellate reversals, to address what rank-and-file members call judicial activism. But each new stay order from a lower court, issued in apparent tension with Supreme Court precedent, makes the case for stronger action harder to dismiss.

The broader pattern extends beyond immigration. Courts have become a primary battleground where policy disagreements play out, with judges increasingly willing to issue sweeping orders that halt executive action nationwide. The question of accountability, who checks a judge who defies the highest court, is not academic. It is the central tension in American governance right now, and cases like a former Wisconsin judge who obstructed an ICE arrest and received only a fine suggest the consequences for judicial defiance remain negligible.

Meanwhile, the administration's enforcement posture continues to harden. DHS has framed the fight in existential terms, not as a policy disagreement, but as a constitutional confrontation between the elected branches and an unaccountable judiciary. Percival's public statement was not the language of a bureaucrat managing litigation. It was the language of an administration that believes the courts are the obstacle, not the arbiter.

Ogles' resolution may meet the same fate as the Boasberg effort. But the underlying problem it identifies, lower-court judges issuing stays that contradict Supreme Court rulings, on grounds the high court has already narrowed, is not going away. And with a growing willingness among conservatives to name institutional resistance for what it is, the political pressure on House leadership to act will only build.

When a lower-court judge can override the Supreme Court by accepting a repackaged complaint, the question is no longer whether the system is working. It is who the system is working for.