A federal appeals court panel, including two Biden appointees, reversed lower court orders that had blocked the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for migrants from Ethiopia and South Sudan.
The First Circuit Court of Appeals issued nearly identical rulings Wednesday, finding that both district court orders directly conflicted with the Supreme Court's decision in Mullin v. Doe. That June ruling held that federal courts cannot block TPS terminations based on non-constitutional claims. The two lower court judges, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy and U.S. District Judge Patti Saris, had each issued temporary orders late last week to preserve the status quo while considering whether plaintiffs could amend their complaints to pursue constitutional arguments. The First Circuit said those procedural maneuvers ran afoul of settled law.
The three-judge panel consisted of Judges Julie Rikelman and Seth Aframe, both Biden appointees, and Judge Joshua Dunlap, a Trump appointee. That two of the three judges who sided with the administration were appointed by the current president's predecessor makes the outcome harder for critics to dismiss as partisan overreach. Fox News Digital reported the rulings as a significant win for the administration's immigration enforcement agenda.
DHS General Counsel James Percival did not hold back. On X, he described Judge Murphy's order blocking TPS termination for Ethiopian migrants as "mutiny against the Supreme Court." He called Judge Saris' order shielding South Sudanese migrants "open defiance" of the justices' decision. Fox News Digital reached out to both judges' offices for comment.
The administration's frustration centers on a pattern: lower court judges issuing orders that effectively delay or prevent the enforcement of executive immigration decisions, even after the Supreme Court has weighed in. The Mullin v. Doe ruling was supposed to settle the question of whether courts could intervene on non-constitutional grounds. Murphy and Saris found procedural workarounds. The First Circuit shut them down.
The lead plaintiff in both cases, African Communities Together, a New York-based immigrant advocacy organization, had challenged the TPS terminations on behalf of individual recipients from Ethiopia and South Sudan. The district judges' orders gave those plaintiffs time to rework their legal theories. But the appeals court's majority held that such orders could not stand while they contradicted binding Supreme Court precedent.
As the court's opinion stated: "Mullin 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."
Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan framed the First Circuit's decisions as the logical extension of the Supreme Court's earlier ruling. He told Fox News Digital:
"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 added a pointed note about the remaining legal path available to the plaintiffs: "If they want to let the plaintiffs amend their complaint, they're allowed to do that, but in the meantime, TPS is over." The distinction matters. Plaintiffs can still try to raise constitutional claims. But they cannot use procedural holds to keep TPS protections in place while they search for a viable argument.
The administration has notched a series of appellate victories in recent months. The First Circuit previously sided with the administration in a separate dispute over National Park sign removals, reversing another lower court order.
A DHS spokesperson delivered the administration's broader argument in a statement to Fox News Digital: "Temporary Protected Status is exactly that, temporary." The spokesperson continued: "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 characterized the First Circuit rulings as "a win for the rule of law and common sense."
That framing reflects a longstanding conservative critique. TPS was designed by Congress as a short-term shield for foreign nationals whose home countries faced armed conflict, natural disasters, or other extraordinary conditions. In practice, successive administrations, mostly Democratic ones, extended protections for years and even decades, allowing recipients to remain in the United States long after the original triggering conditions had changed. The Trump administration's position is that ending those extensions is not a policy choice subject to judicial review on statutory grounds. The Supreme Court agreed in Mullin v. Doe.
Federal appeals courts across the country have increasingly sided with that reading. The D.C. Circuit recently overturned a Biden appointee's block on the administration's expedited removal policy, and the Second Circuit handed the administration a legal victory in an unrelated case involving a Columbia University activist.
The First Circuit's rulings expose a tension that has defined immigration litigation throughout the Trump administration. District court judges, many appointed by President Biden, have repeatedly issued orders blocking or delaying the administration's enforcement actions. The Supreme Court's Mullin v. Doe decision was supposed to draw a clear line. Murphy and Saris tested whether procedural creativity could work around that line. The answer, at least in the First Circuit, is no.
Percival's language, "mutiny" and "open defiance", is sharper than typical government legal commentary. But it reflects a genuine institutional frustration. When the Supreme Court rules that a category of claims is barred, and lower court judges find procedural mechanisms to achieve the same result those barred claims would have produced, the question of judicial compliance becomes unavoidable.
The Supreme Court's earlier ruling upholding the administration's authority to end Haitian TPS protections set the stage for this broader legal reckoning. Each subsequent appellate decision reinforcing that precedent narrows the ground available to opponents of TPS terminations.
Plaintiffs can still attempt to raise constitutional claims. That door remains open. But the practical effect of the First Circuit's rulings is immediate: the procedural holds are gone, and TPS terminations for Ethiopian and South Sudanese migrants move forward.
The D.C. Circuit's recent ruling in the administration's favor on a separate legal matter underscores a broader pattern, federal appeals courts are enforcing the boundaries that lower courts have tried to blur.
Congress wrote TPS as a temporary program. The Supreme Court confirmed it. And now the appeals courts are telling district judges to stop pretending otherwise.