US judge says government can revoke deportation protections for Ethiopians

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On Tuesday, US District Judge Brian Murphy gave the go-ahead for the termination of the group’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a legal category that allows foreign nationals in the US to stay and apply for work authorisation, on the basis that conditions in their home country may not be safe to return to. Since returning to office for a second term in 2025, Trump has sought to end TPS protections for a range of nationalities. Tuesday’s ruling removes the final judicial block that had prevented the government from ending TPS for individual countries. Administration officials celebrated the ruling. “Judge Brian Murphy just lifted the stay of Ethiopia TPS termination,” Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival wrote in a social media post. “All TPS terminations are in effect!” The decision follows a 6-3 ruling from the US Supreme Court in June that limited the ability of courts to review Homeland Security’s efforts to terminate TPS protections. While the Supreme Court’s ruling focused on TPS recipients from Syria and Haiti, it also had broader applications for people of other nationalities fighting the premature termination of their TPS status. Roughly 1.29 million people were living in the US under the protection of the TPS system as of March. They represented 17 countries where the US government had deemed conditions unsafe or unstable. The Trump administration, however, has sought to terminate TPS protections for at least 13 of those nationalities, including people from Venezuela, Nicaragua, South Sudan and Somalia. The Pew Research Center estimates that the TPS revocations will affect at least one million people who were participating in the programme as of this year. Trump has undertaken a large-scale effort to restrict immigration and increase deportations since embarking on his second term. Revoking TPS has been part of that project. His administration has argued that repeated extensions to the TPS programme have rendered it less a “temporary” programme and more a long-term one. “Temporary Protected Status is just that — TEMPORARY,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin wrote on Tuesday, in reaction to the latest ruling. He then issued a warning to those who found their legal status cancelled: “If you are in our nation and your status has been terminated, you are here ILLEGALLY. You have two options: leave immediately or be swiftly deported.” But critics have pointed out that TPS is being revoked for groups whose home countries continue to suffer from civil conflict, natural disasters, and other dangers. Ethiopians living in the US were first granted TPS under the administration of former President Joe Biden in 2022 over concerns about violent conflict and humanitarian issues in Ethiopia. The US State Department currently lists the country under a level-three travel advisory on its four-point scale, advising citizens not to travel there due to “unrest, crime, kidnapping, terrorism [and] landmines”. The Department of Homeland Security first announced in December that it would end TPS protections for Ethiopians, stating that conditions in the country “no longer pose a serious threat to the personal safety of returning Ethiopian nationals”. Rights groups, however, have pointed out that the Trump administration’s decision does not appear to reflect the reality on the ground in Ethiopia. “The crisis in Ethiopia is still ongoing, and this decision puts the lives of thousands of Ethiopians living in the US at severe risk,” Diana Konate, deputy executive director of policy and advocacy at the group African Communities Together, told the news agency Reuters. Judge Murphy had previously paused the Trump administration’s attempts to end TPS for Ethiopians, as he considered issues not addressed by the Supreme Court’s June decision. His court heard arguments that it was the attorney general, not the Department of Homeland Security, that was empowered under the law to end TPS protections before their expiry. But ultimately, Murphy dismissed that argument — though Tuesday’s decision leaves open the possibility of an appeal on the basis that the Trump administration was motivated in its decision by animus against certain races or nationalities. 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