JUST IN: Trump Scores Major Legal Victory

President Donald Trump scored a major legal victory Tuesday after a federal judge cleared the way for his administration to end deportation protections for more than 5,000 Ethiopians living in the United States.

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston lifted the last remaining judicial block preventing the Department of Homeland Security from terminating Temporary Protected Status for Ethiopians.

The ruling hands the Trump administration another win in its broader effort to roll back humanitarian immigration programs that were expanded under former President Joe Biden.

The decision comes after the Supreme Court ruled in June that the administration could end similar protections for thousands of migrants from Haiti and Syria.

That ruling, backed by the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, sharply limited the ability of lower courts to interfere with DHS decisions ending Temporary Protected Status designations for individual countries.

James Percival, DHS’s general counsel, celebrated Tuesday’s ruling on social media.

“All TPS terminations are in effect!” he wrote.

Temporary Protected Status allows eligible foreign nationals from countries facing armed conflict, natural disasters or other extraordinary conditions to remain in the United States temporarily and obtain work authorization.

The Biden administration first granted TPS to eligible Ethiopians already living in the United States in 2022, citing armed conflict and humanitarian conditions in the African nation.

DHS later moved to terminate those protections after determining that conditions in Ethiopia no longer justified continued blanket protection from deportation.

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Murphy initially blocked the administration’s move in April after several Ethiopian nationals and African Communities Together challenged the decision.

At the time, Murphy said DHS had failed to properly follow statutory procedures and had offered a “pretextual” explanation for ending the protections.

After the Supreme Court’s June ruling, Murphy temporarily kept his block in place while considering whether other legal arguments could still prevent the Trump administration from ending the program.

🚨 BREAKING: A federal judge has just LIFTED the FINAL block on Trump’s termination of TPS for third world illegals, giving the green light to deport ETHIOPIANS

MAJOR WIN! 🔥

These people invaded our country EN MASSE, as captured by @AliBradleyTV, and they’re FINALLY on the… pic.twitter.com/Pa7DWaftEn

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) August 18, 2026

One of those arguments centered on whether DHS had authority to terminate TPS designations at all.

The plaintiffs argued that the 1990 law creating Temporary Protected Status gave that power to the attorney general and not DHS, which was created years later following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Judges handling similar challenges involving migrants from South Sudan, Myanmar and Somalia rejected that argument in recent days.

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Murphy did the same Tuesday.

He dismissed that claim along with other challenges, removing the final legal obstacle to ending the Ethiopian TPS designation.

The ruling does not completely end the litigation.

Murphy said the plaintiffs may continue pursuing a separate constitutional claim alleging that the administration’s decision was motivated by racial or national-origin bias in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

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The plaintiffs argue that dangerous conditions remain in Ethiopia and claim the administration has disproportionately targeted deportation protections covering migrants from non-white and non-European countries.

The Trump administration disputes those accusations and has maintained that Temporary Protected Status was never intended to become a permanent immigration program.

For now, the practical result is another significant courtroom victory for Trump’s immigration agenda, with the administration free to move forward with ending protections that have allowed thousands of Ethiopians to live and work in the United States.

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