A federal judge in Boston lifted the last remaining judicial hold on the Trump administration's termination of Temporary Protected Status for Ethiopian nationals, a ruling that puts all of the administration's TPS revocations fully into effect across more than a dozen countries.

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy removed his earlier administrative stay on Tuesday, clearing the Department of Homeland Security to enforce the termination of deportation protections for Ethiopian immigrants. The decision followed a landmark Supreme Court ruling in June that determined, in a 6-3 decision, that courts lack the authority to review TPS revocation decisions in nearly all instances. Murphy's hold had been the final legal obstacle standing between DHS and full enforcement of its TPS terminations nationwide.

The ruling marks a clean sweep for the administration's immigration enforcement agenda. DHS had pursued TPS terminations for a broad list of countries, and with Murphy's stay now dissolved, every one of those terminations is in effect. The Department of Homeland Security wasted no time making that point clear.

DHS tells TPS holders: leave now or face deportation

Minutes after the ruling, DHS posted a blunt statement on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter:

"ALL TPS terminations are now IN EFFECT. Those with terminated TPS should leave NOW. If they don't, we will DEPORT them."

DHS General Counsel James Percival echoed the message. "Judge Brian Murphy just lifted the stay of Ethiopia TPS termination. All TPS terminations are in effect!" Percival said, confirming the administration's position that no further legal barriers remain.

The tone was unmistakable. For months, a patchwork of court orders had kept various TPS designations alive while legal challenges worked through the system. That patchwork is now gone. The administration's consistent position, that conditions in designated countries had improved enough to end protections, has been upheld at every level, from the district court in Boston to the Supreme Court.

Murphy's split ruling keeps one door open for plaintiffs

Murphy's decision was not a total loss for the challengers. The judge issued a split ruling. He found that DHS has the authority to terminate TPS designations and that individual TPS holders are not entitled to personal hearings before a nationwide program ends. But he also found that the plaintiffs, a group called African Communities Together, presented a plausible case that the government ended protections due to racial and national-origin discrimination, allegedly violating the Fifth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.

That discrimination claim will move forward. It is worth noting, however, that the claim surviving does not stop DHS from enforcing the termination. The stay is lifted. The protections are over. Whatever comes of the discrimination lawsuit will play out in court while enforcement proceeds.

The case, African Communities Together v. Markwayne Mullin, had generated a series of temporary court-ordered pauses since the Homeland Security Secretary terminated Ethiopia's TPS designation last December, setting an effective end date of February 13, 2026. Those pauses delayed enforcement for months. Murphy's ruling ended the last one.

The administration has notched a string of federal court wins on immigration enforcement this year, and this decision fits squarely in that pattern.

Supreme Court's June ruling broke the legal dam

The foundation for Murphy's decision was laid by the Supreme Court's June ruling, which held that TPS revocation decisions are unreviewable by courts in nearly all circumstances. That 6-3 decision applied to the administration's termination of protections for thousands of people from Haiti and Syria, and it sent a clear signal to lower courts handling similar challenges.

Just The News reported that Murphy's stay had been the last judicial block in place for the administration's TPS terminations. Once the Supreme Court stripped lower courts of review authority, the remaining challenges had little ground to stand on. Murphy, notably a Biden appointee, followed the higher court's lead.

That detail matters. Critics of the administration's immigration agenda have frequently argued that its policies would not survive judicial scrutiny. In this case, a judge appointed by President Biden reached the same legal conclusion the administration had argued all along: DHS has the statutory authority to end TPS designations when it determines conditions in a country have improved.

The Supreme Court's composition has been a factor in several major rulings this term. The court's current makeup has proven willing to enforce statutory limits on judicial review, particularly in immigration cases where executive discretion has historically been broad.

TPS revocations now span more than a dozen countries

With Murphy's stay lifted, the administration's TPS terminations cover a sweeping list of nations. Beyond Ethiopia, TPS has been revoked for Somalia, Honduras, Afghanistan, Haiti, Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, Venezuela, and others. The full scope extends across more than a dozen countries, Fox News reported.

Congress created TPS in 1990 as a humanitarian program granting temporary work authorization and protection from deportation to noncitizens whose home countries were deemed unsafe due to armed conflict, natural disasters, or other extraordinary conditions. The key word was always "temporary." Critics on the right have long argued that successive administrations allowed TPS designations to stretch for years or decades, effectively converting a short-term humanitarian measure into a permanent residency program without congressional approval.

Ethiopia was first designated for TPS on December 12, 2022, following ongoing armed conflict and severe climatic shocks. DHS later determined that conditions in the country had improved enough to end the designation. The administration's position, that the statutory conditions for TPS no longer applied, was the basis for the termination.

The broader push to shift immigration enforcement costs away from taxpayers has been a consistent theme of the administration's approach, and the TPS terminations fit that framework. Ending protections that the administration argues are no longer justified reduces the administrative burden on DHS and signals that temporary programs will be treated as temporary.

Open questions remain as enforcement begins

Several questions remain unanswered. The exact number of Ethiopian nationals affected by the termination has not been publicly disclosed. The scope of the discrimination claim that Murphy allowed to proceed, and whether it could produce any future injunction, is unclear. And the practical enforcement timeline for individuals whose protections have now formally ended remains to be seen.

What is clear is the legal trajectory. Every major challenge to the administration's TPS terminations has now failed. The Supreme Court stripped courts of review authority. A Biden-appointed district judge followed that precedent. And DHS has declared, in terms that leave no room for ambiguity, that enforcement will proceed.

The administration has pursued a broad agenda of executive action on immigration, and the courts have increasingly validated that approach. For those who argued the legal system would serve as a permanent check on enforcement, this week's ruling is a difficult result to explain away.

For years, "temporary" protected status functioned as anything but. Now the law means what it says, and the people who wrote it that way in 1990 would have a hard time arguing otherwise.