Africa-Press. A federal judge has allowed the administration of former President Donald Trump to end the legal protections granted to over 5,000 Ethiopians, which enabled them to live and work in the United States.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston lifted the last legal barrier for the Department of Homeland Security to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for certain countries, following a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in June that permitted the administration to end similar protections for thousands of individuals from Haiti and Syria.
The Supreme Court’s ruling, backed by a conservative majority (6-3), limited judges’ ability to review the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts under Trump to terminate TPS for 13 countries, which provided humanitarian protection for eligible immigrants from those nations.
James Percival, the general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, praised the decision in a social media post, stating, “All decisions to terminate TPS are in effect!”.
Several Ethiopian citizens and the group “African Communities Together” challenged the decision to end TPS for Ethiopia, expressing their disappointment with the ruling.
Diana Konate, the deputy executive director for policy and advocacy at the group, stated, “The crisis in Ethiopia is ongoing, and this decision puts the lives of thousands of Ethiopians residing in the United States at serious risk.”.
TPS is granted under federal law to individuals from countries that have experienced natural disasters, armed conflicts, or other extraordinary events. This status provides eligible immigrants with work authorization and temporary protection from deportation.
The administration of former Democratic President Joe Biden granted TPS to Ethiopians already residing in the United States starting in 2022, citing the need to protect citizens of the African nation from armed conflict and humanitarian suffering.
In December, under former Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, the Department of Homeland Security announced the termination of that protection, arguing that conditions no longer posed a serious threat to the safe return of Ethiopians.
In April, Murphy blocked the Department of Homeland Security’s decision, stating it ignored legal procedures and provided a “pretextual” justification for ending the protections. After the Supreme Court ruling, Murphy issued a new order that temporarily continued to suspend the termination of TPS for Ethiopians while considering the possibility of further halting the Department of Homeland Security’s actions for reasons not addressed by the Supreme Court ruling.
Among those arguments is that the 1990 law that established TPS granted the Attorney General sole authority to extend or terminate deportation protections, not the Department of Homeland Security, which was created later after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Judges in similar cases involving individuals from South Sudan, Myanmar, and Somalia have recently rejected this claim, and Judge Murphy did the same on Tuesday.
Murphy dismissed this claim and others but stated he would allow plaintiffs to continue litigating whether the Department of Homeland Security’s actions were driven by racial or national bias, in violation of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Plaintiffs argued that the administration ignored the ongoing dangerous conditions in Ethiopia and that the termination of TPS was part of a broader practice of rescinding deportation protections for non-white and non-European individuals.
