Milton Friedman once observed that nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program. For decades, Americans watched emergency immigration designations — designed to last months — quietly stretch into years, then decades. The Temporary Protected Status program, created in 1990 to shelter migrants from short-term crises like earthquakes and civil wars, became Washington’s favorite sleight of hand. Create something “temporary.” Never sunset it. Repeat.
This summer, the Supreme Court finally put its foot down. In a decisive 6-3 ruling in June, the Court’s conservative majority stripped lower courts of the authority to second-guess executive branch TPS terminations. Judges who had spent years playing immigration policymaker from the bench suddenly found themselves without a legal leg to stand on. And the results have been swift.
From The Post Millennial:
The Trump administration secured a legal victory Friday after a federal judge allowed it to move forward with its plan to terminate temporary protected status for Somali nationals residing in the United States.
US District Judge Allison Burroughs lifted a stay that had prevented the Department of Homeland Security from terminating Somalia’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation. Burroughs cited a June Supreme Court ruling that limited judicial review of certain decisions concerning TPS designations. The Supreme Court ruled that the TPS statute bars judicial review of certain nonconstitutional challenges to the administration’s TPS changes.
Make no mistake — this is a significant victory. Not out of any hostility toward individual Somalis, but because it represents something increasingly rare in Washington: the constitutional order actually functioning as intended. The executive branch made a policy call. The Supreme Court affirmed its authority to do so. A lower court judge, whatever her personal feelings, respected the ruling.
An Obama judge, bound by the law
Here’s what makes this especially notable. Judge Burroughs wasn’t some Trump-friendly jurist eager to greenlight the administration’s agenda. She’s an Obama appointee who had previously blocked this very termination. She openly sympathized with the plaintiffs, writing that they “made a convincing showing that they will suffer irreparable harm if the injunction is withheld.”
She lifted the block anyway. The Supreme Court’s June decision gave her zero room to maneuver. When a judge who transparently favors the other side admits the legal question is settled, the administration isn’t just winning — it’s winning decisively.
The plaintiffs tried arguing racial motivation. That kind of claim might earn applause in faculty lounges, but it ran headfirst into the Court’s plain statutory reading. The TPS statute bars judicial review of certain nonconstitutional challenges. End of discussion.
A pattern the left can’t ignore
Somalia isn’t a one-off. It’s the latest in a rapid-fire sequence of victories that kicked off after the June ruling. According to Reuters, two other federal judges last week greenlit TPS terminations for South Sudan and Myanmar. The June decision itself opened the door for ending protections for thousands from Haiti and Syria.
Do the math. Of the 13 countries whose TPS designations the Trump administration has moved to terminate, only Ethiopia’s protections remain under a judicial hold. The legal wall that immigration activists spent years building? It has a dozen holes in it now.
Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the Somalia termination back in January, arguing conditions in the country no longer warranted the designation. According to US Citizenship and Immigration Services, 2,471 Somali nationals currently hold TPS in the United States, with another 1,383 applications pending. Nearly four thousand people on a program that was never supposed to be permanent.
This is what elections produce
These numbers are a modest fraction of the broader immigration picture. But the principle behind them is enormous. When Americans elected Donald Trump, they voted for an administration willing to enforce the plain meaning of statutes, appoint judges who respect constitutional boundaries, and hold “temporary” programs to their own definitions.
The machinery behind Friday’s ruling was years in the making. Trump’s Supreme Court appointments built the conservative majority. That majority delivered June’s landmark decision. That decision cascaded through the lower courts. And now an Obama-appointed judge in Boston is dissolving her own injunction because the law demands it.
That is how the republic is supposed to work. Elections produce consequences. Judicial appointments produce consequences. And “temporary” — after far too many years of meaning absolutely nothing — finally produces consequences too.
Key Takeaways
- Federal judge lifts her own injunction, clearing Trump to terminate TPS for Somali nationals.
- Even an Obama-appointed judge conceded the Supreme Court’s ruling left no room for obstruction.
- Somalia joins Haiti, Syria, South Sudan, and Myanmar — only Ethiopia’s TPS remains blocked.
- The ruling reaffirms that immigration policy belongs to the executive branch, not activist courts.
Sources: The Post Millennial, Reuters
