Driving the news: U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, appointed by Barack Obama, issued a new administrative stay blocking the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for Somalia. The order came Friday. It followed an amended complaint by African Communities Together alleging Fifth Amendment violations — racial and national-origin discrimination.
Why it matters: The Supreme Court's June ruling in Mullin v. Doe sharply limited lower courts' ability to block TPS terminations on non-constitutional grounds. Plaintiffs rewrote their lawsuit around constitutional claims specifically to get around that ruling. Burroughs bit.
Between the lines: Just days earlier, the First Circuit reversed similar stays issued by two other district judges — Judges Brian Murphy and Patti Saris — who had blocked TPS terminations for Ethiopia and South Sudan. The First Circuit cited Mullin directly.
The pushback: DHS General Counsel James Percival called it out by name. 'Judge Allison Burroughs just entered yet another order preventing the termination of Somalia TPS,' he wrote on X. 'There is no serious debate about what is going on in these cases — defiance, obstruction, and delay.' Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan called the claims legally deficient.
The bottom line: A single district judge, working around a Supreme Court ruling through procedural maneuvering, is holding immigration enforcement hostage. That is not judicial independence. It is the administrative state in a robe. Congress and the executive branch have every reason to make the cost of that obstruction explicit.