A federal judge in Boston has thrown a major wrench into the Trump administration’s immigration agenda, ruling Wednesday that the government cannot immediately strip roughly 5,000 Ethiopians of Temporary Protected Status. For now, their work permits and temporary protection from deportation stay in place while a legal challenge plays out, and a December Department of Homeland Security order to end the program is on hold.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy issued the ruling after three Ethiopian nationals, joined by the advocacy group African Communities Together, sued the Department of Homeland Security. They argue the agency brushed past ongoing armed conflict and humanitarian dangers in parts of Ethiopia, rushed the termination with only 60 days’ notice, and acted on a pretext. Judge Murphy put the termination on ice so the case can move forward, according to Reuters.
The Department of Homeland Security, led by Secretary Kristi Noem, had published a Federal Register notice in December setting February 13, 2026 as the date Ethiopia’s TPS designation would end, with short automatic extensions for some work permits during the wind-down. The notice said conditions in Ethiopia had improved enough to justify ending protections, a point the plaintiffs sharply contest. As laid out in the Federal Register, DHS detailed its stated rationale and the transition timeline.
Temporary Protected Status is a humanitarian program that lets nationals of countries experiencing armed conflict or natural disasters live and work legally in the United States for limited periods. Ethiopia received its TPS designation in late 2022, and the status was extended and redesignated in April 2024, opening the door for additional Ethiopians to apply, according to USCIS.
The lawsuit argues that DHS ignored continuing violence, displacement, and food insecurity in parts of Ethiopia and that the termination was a pretext driven by unconstitutional animus. Advocates say the case is the latest in a series of court challenges to the administration’s moves to roll back protections for immigrants from several countries, Al Jazeera reported.
Judge Murphy said he would keep the status quo in place while the court digs into the agency’s decision making record, and he ordered DHS to hand over internal documents showing how it reached the call to terminate TPS. That step is meant to give the court a fuller file to scrutinize. In practical terms, the order keeps work authorization and protection from removal intact for the affected Ethiopians while the litigation continues, as reported by Reuters.
What Comes Next
The ruling lands in the middle of a broader, high-stakes legal fight over the administration’s bid to end TPS for multiple groups. The U.S. Supreme Court has already agreed to hear arguments in April on the government’s effort to revoke protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and thousands of Syrians, a case that could set a nationwide blueprint for how, and how easily, TPS can be taken away, according to the Associated Press.
For Ethiopian communities in U.S. cities with sizable diasporas, from Minneapolis to New York City, the stay buys time but not peace of mind. Lawyers say the case will now move into discovery and could generate appeals that drag on for months, leaving beneficiaries in legal limbo even as they keep their work permits. Legal observers note that the dispute will largely turn on whether DHS followed proper procedures and whether its stated reasons can survive close scrutiny in court, per Bloomberg Law.
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