Judge Allison Burroughs spent five months blocking Trump from deporting Somali nationals.
Then the Supreme Court handed down a ruling she couldn't ignore.
She lifted her own stay – and the story of how that happened is something Democrats don't want you to see.
The Same Judge Who Blocked Trump Just Cleared His Path
She was the wall.
Then the Supreme Court handed down Mullin v. Doe on June 25 – a 6-3 ruling along conservative lines that stripped federal district courts of their power to block TPS terminations based on non-constitutional claims.
Burroughs wrote that she was "bound to view things through the Mullin prism."
Burroughs wrote that she was "bound … to view things through the Mullin prism," referring to the Supreme Court case.
"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.
https://twitter.com/tcf_updates/status/2088837966911389970?s=20
Burroughs lifted her own stay.
Somalia's TPS designation is now officially terminated – effective August 14, 2026 – after 35 years of protections that were supposed to be temporary.
Work permits previously issued to Somali TPS holders are now void.
What "Temporary" Was Never Supposed to Mean
Congress created TPS in 1990 as short-term humanitarian relief for people fleeing armed conflict and natural disasters.
The operative word was temporary.
Somalia got its designation in 1991.
Thirty-five years later, it was still active.
That's not humanitarian protection – that's a permanent residency program that never went through Congress.
DHS under Secretary Kristi Noem determined in January 2026 that conditions inside Somalia had improved enough to end it.
The Congressional Committee on Homeland Security had already made the security case: Al-Shabaab recruited and fundraised inside the Somali diaspora in the United States.
Multiple Somali-Americans were prosecuted for terrorist financing.
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In October 2025, a 23-year-old named Abdisatar Ahmed Hasan pled guilty to attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.
Despite all of that, activist judges kept the program alive – until the Supreme Court took that power away from them.
DHS General Counsel James Percival didn't mince words about what had been happening: "Defiance, obstruction, and delay."
35 Years of "Temporary" Just Ended
Roughly 1,082 Somali nationals held approved TPS status as of December 2025.
Somalia is one of 13 countries that have now lost TPS designation under the Trump administration.
Previous administrations – Democrat and Republican alike – had let the "temporary" program balloon into what DHS called a "de facto amnesty program" covering nationals from 17 countries.
"By eliminating the Somali program, you're pretty much eliminating the TPS program," said Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN).
The Trump administration is dismantling it one country at a time.
And now, after the Supreme Court moved, even the judges who were blocking it are standing down.
Congress wrote the judicial review bar into the TPS statute for exactly this reason: these decisions belong to the executive branch, not to Obama appointees in Boston federal courts.
The Supreme Court just reminded everyone of that, 6-3.
Sources:
- Lowell Cauffiel, "Trump Scores Major Immigration Victory After Obama-Appointed Judge Clears Way to End TPS Protections for Thousands of Somalis," Breitbart, August 16, 2026.
- "Mullin v. Doe (25-1083)," Supreme Court of the United States, June 25, 2026.
- "Termination of the Designation of Somalia for Temporary Protected Status," Federal Register, January 14, 2026.
- "Termination of Temporary Protected Status for Somalia (Release: Aug. 14, 2026)," USCIS, August 14, 2026.
- "First Circuit reverses TPS termination blocks for South Sudan, Ethiopia," Fox News, August 2026.
- "Rogue Judges Are Helping Temporary Migrants Sidestep SCOTUS," The Federalist, July 28, 2026.
- "DHS fires back at 'activist judges' blocking temporary protected status crackdown," Fox News, 2025.
