A federal appeals court panel that included two Biden appointees reversed district court orders blocking the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for migrants from Ethiopia and South Sudan, a ruling DHS called "a win for the rule of law."
The First Circuit Court of Appeals issued two nearly identical rulings Wednesday, finding that both lower-court orders conflicted with the Supreme Court's June decision in Mullin v. Doe. That decision held that federal courts cannot block TPS terminations based on non-constitutional claims, a legal barrier that, in practice, strips district judges of most of their leverage to freeze the administration's moves on immigration status.
The three-judge panel, Judges Julie Rikelman and Seth Aframe, both appointed by President Joe Biden, and Judge Joshua Dunlap, appointed by President Trump, found that U.S. District Judges Brian Murphy and Patti Saris had overstepped when they issued procedural orders late last week temporarily halting TPS terminations for Ethiopia and South Sudan, respectively. The panel cited the Supreme Court's own language in Mullin, writing that the high court "held that 'the TPS statute's judicial-review bar applies to all non-constitutional claims' challenging the Secretary of Homeland Security's determination with respect to the termination of a TPS designation."
The fact that two Biden-appointed judges joined the ruling undercuts the progressive narrative that the judiciary serves as a reliable check on Trump's immigration agenda. When judges appointed by the prior administration apply Supreme Court precedent to side with the current one, the legal ground beneath activist district court orders erodes fast.
Temporary Protected Status allows foreign nationals from countries experiencing armed conflict, natural disasters, or other extraordinary conditions to remain in the United States temporarily. Congress designed the program as a short-term shield, not a permanent residency track. But successive administrations extended TPS designations for years, sometimes decades, creating a population of recipients who built lives in the country under what was always, by statute, a temporary arrangement.
The Trump administration moved to terminate TPS for both Ethiopia and South Sudan. African Communities Together, a New York-based immigrant advocacy organization, filed two lawsuits on behalf of individual TPS recipients from those countries, arguing that DHS unlawfully ended protections, violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Constitution, failed to assess country conditions, and made decisions motivated by racial discrimination.
Late last week, Judges Murphy and Saris each issued orders temporarily blocking the terminations. Their stated rationale, as characterized by plaintiffs, was to preserve the status quo while they considered whether the plaintiffs could amend their complaints to pursue constitutional claims, the one narrow category Mullin v. Doe left open.
DHS General Counsel James Percival did not wait for the appeals court to weigh in. He took to X to describe Judge Murphy's order as "mutiny against the Supreme Court" and Judge Saris' ruling as "open defiance" of the justices' decision, as Fox News Digital reported. Fox News Digital reached out to both judges' offices for comment.
The language was sharp, but the First Circuit's rulings suggest Percival's underlying point had legal merit. The district judges issued their orders after the Supreme Court had already spoken on the scope of judicial review in TPS cases. The appeals court moved quickly to correct what it saw as a conflict with binding precedent.
Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan told Fox News Digital the decisions were unambiguous.
"These are clear wins for President Trump following his big win at the U.S. Supreme Court, explaining that district courts are not supposed to second guess TPS terminations, and even as this plays out, we're moving towards the end of this litigation because district courts should not be hearing these disputes, and that's what the Supreme Court said."
Wessan acknowledged that district courts retain some discretion to let plaintiffs amend their complaints, but drew a hard line on the practical consequence. The Supreme Court's Mullin decision already established that the vast majority of challenges to TPS terminations fall outside judicial review. The only door left open is for claims alleging actual constitutional violations, a far higher bar than the statutory and procedural arguments advocacy groups have relied on for years.
Wessan put it bluntly:
"If they want to let the plaintiffs amend their complaint, they're allowed to do that, but in the meantime, TPS is over."
That framing matters. Even if district courts allow amended complaints, the TPS terminations proceed while the litigation continues. The status quo has shifted. The administration no longer needs to wait for courts to finish deliberating before acting on designations it has already ended.
The Supreme Court has backed the Trump administration's immigration authority in other recent cases as well, reinforcing a pattern in which the high court sides with executive discretion on matters of immigration enforcement and status determinations.
A DHS spokesperson welcomed the First Circuit's rulings and used the moment to make a broader policy argument about the program itself.
"Temporary Protected Status is exactly that, temporary. For too long, TPS has been allowed to function as a de facto amnesty program despite Congress never intending it to be permanent."
The spokesperson called the rulings "a win for the rule of law and common sense." That characterization carries weight coming on the heels of a Supreme Court decision that already narrowed the legal avenues available to TPS challengers. With the First Circuit now enforcing Mullin against district judges who attempted to preserve the old status quo, the administration's position has strengthened on two fronts: the law and the momentum.
The broader enforcement picture is already shifting. Following the Supreme Court's TPS ruling, ICE has begun preparing enforcement operations tied to expiring TPS designations, signaling that the administration views the legal landscape as settled enough to move from courtroom wins to on-the-ground action.
African Communities Together, the lead plaintiff in both cases, argued that DHS failed to properly assess conditions in Ethiopia and South Sudan before terminating protections and that the decisions were motivated by racial discrimination. Those are serious allegations, but they now face a legal environment in which the Supreme Court has stripped away the procedural scaffolding that once allowed district courts to freeze executive action on TPS while such claims were litigated.
The First Circuit rulings fit a recurring dynamic in immigration litigation under the Trump administration. District judges, often in jurisdictions with large immigrant populations, issue orders blocking executive action. The administration appeals. And appellate courts, sometimes including judges appointed by Democratic presidents, reverse the lower courts, citing binding precedent the district judges either stretched or ignored.
Percival's use of words like "mutiny" and "open defiance" reflects the administration's frustration with that cycle. Whether or not those terms are fair characterizations of judicial reasoning, the First Circuit's rapid reversal suggests the district court orders rested on shaky legal ground. The appeals panel did not need weeks of briefing to reach its conclusion. It applied Mullin and found the lower courts in conflict with it.
The question now is whether other district courts will take the hint, or whether the administration will continue fighting the same battle in different courthouses. Trump has pursued his legal positions aggressively across multiple fronts, including petitioning the Supreme Court in cases well beyond immigration.
For TPS recipients from Ethiopia and South Sudan, the practical reality is stark. The legal protections they relied on have been terminated by the executive branch, and the courts that tried to pause those terminations have been overruled. The constitutional claims that remain theoretically available face a high evidentiary bar and a judiciary that has shown little appetite for second-guessing the executive on TPS designations.
And for the advocacy organizations that have used the federal courts as a backstop against immigration enforcement for years, the terrain has narrowed considerably. The Supreme Court closed most of the doors in Mullin. The First Circuit just locked them. Even a panel with two Biden appointees found no basis to keep those doors propped open.
The administration has also signaled willingness to take fights to the Supreme Court when lower courts resist, a posture that puts district judges on notice that defiance of high-court precedent will be corrected swiftly.
Congress wrote "temporary" into the name of the program. The Supreme Court enforced that word. And now a liberal-leaning appeals panel has told district judges they cannot rewrite it. At some point, the courts that keep trying to make "temporary" mean "permanent" will run out of legal room, and that point appears to be arriving.