MIAMI — In a sharp legal rebuke of the second Trump administration’s hardline immigration agenda, a federal judge has halted the White House’s move to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 5,000 Ethiopian nationals living and working legally in the United States. The ruling marks the latest in a string of judicial setbacks for the administration’s broader push to wind down the decades-old humanitarian program, as hundreds of thousands of TPS holders from across the globe continue to challenge their status terminations in federal courts across the country.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, a Massachusetts-based jurist appointed by President Joe Biden, issued the ruling Wednesday, finding that the Trump administration’s termination of Ethiopian TPS violated congressionally mandated procedural rules. “Fundamental to this case — and indeed to our constitutional system — is the principle that the will of the President does not supersede that of Congress,” Murphy wrote in his 31-page decision. “Presidential whims do not and cannot supplant agencies’ statutory obligations.”
Created by Congress in 1990, TPS was designed as a humanitarian safeguard: it prevents the deportation of migrants from countries grappling with armed conflict, natural disasters, or widespread humanitarian crisis, and grants recipients temporary authorization to work in 18-month increments. The Biden administration first granted TPS protection to Ethiopian residents of the U.S. in 2022, following the outbreak of devastating civil conflict in the country’s Tigray region, and extended that designation in 2024. But when Trump returned to the Oval Office in January 2025, his administration moved to wind down TPS protections for most designated countries: to date, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has terminated TPS for 13 of the 17 countries that held the designation during the Biden presidency, leaving just three nations with active protected status covering more than 1 million total beneficiaries, who come from Venezuela, Haiti, and El Salvador as the three largest groups.
In December 2025, DHS officially ended TPS for Ethiopia, arguing that ongoing conflict and humanitarian need in the country no longer met the statutory threshold for continued designation. Murphy rejected that move, however, finding that DHS had failed to follow the explicit procedural framework Congress laid out for altering or ending TPS designations. “The administration terminated this status without regard for the process delineated by Congress,” Murphy wrote.
The ruling comes just weeks ahead of a high-stakes Supreme Court hearing scheduled for April 29, where justices will hear arguments over the Trump administration’s efforts to end TPS for roughly 6,100 Syrian nationals and 350,000 Haitian nationals currently protected by the program. Hundreds of thousands of additional TPS holders from other nationalities have also filed legal challenges to their status terminations, making the Ethiopian ruling the latest defeat for the administration’s policy.
Following the decision, DHS pushed back against the ruling in a statement, framing the judge’s action as an example of judicial overreach. DHS spokeswoman Lauren Bis argued that the decision “is just the latest example of judicial activists trying to prevent President Trump from restoring integrity to America’s legal immigration system.” The agency reiterated that TPS is intended to be a strictly temporary humanitarian program, consistent with the original text of the 1990 law that created it.