A Tennessee Republican congressman is pushing to remove a federal judge from the bench after she issued a new order blocking the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Somali nationals, just days after the Supreme Court significantly curtailed courts’ ability to intervene in such matters.
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) has announced plans to file articles of impeachment against U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs, an Obama appointee serving on the District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
The dispute centers on Temporary Protected Status, a program that allows nationals from designated countries to stay in the United States and work legally when conditions back home, including armed conflict or extraordinary circumstances, make returning unsafe. The law gives the Secretary of Homeland Security broad authority to designate, extend, or terminate TPS status. Crucially, the statute explicitly bars judicial review of those decisions.
Back in January, then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem issued a notice terminating TPS for Somalia, set to take effect March 17, 2026. Advocacy groups and affected individuals quickly sued in Massachusetts, and Burroughs put the termination on hold while the case proceeded.
As originally reported, the legal landscape shifted dramatically on June 25, when the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the judicial review bar in the TPS statute blocks non-constitutional challenges to terminations. The ruling reversed lower-court stays that had paused TPS terminations for Haiti and Syria, and sent those cases back down. Constitutional claims remained technically available, though the Court signaled skepticism about the equal-protection argument raised in the Haiti case.
The First Circuit then applied that framework directly to comparable stays involving Ethiopia and South Sudan, reversing those orders as well.
Despite all of that, the Somalia plaintiffs filed an amended complaint and emergency motion on July 30, pivoting to Fifth Amendment arguments. They claimed the termination decision had been predetermined, violating due process, and that it discriminated based on race and national origin. As evidence, they pointed to public statements made by President Trump about Somali immigrants.
The very next day, Judge Burroughs issued a fresh stay, declaring the termination void for the time being and keeping the Somalia TPS designation in place while the court weighs whether the amended constitutional claims can support longer-term relief. Roughly 1,100 individuals hold TPS under the Somalia designation.
That move prompted Ogles to announce his impeachment push, framing Burroughs as an activist judge defying both the Supreme Court and the plain language of the statute.
The situation puts the Somalia TPS case on a collision course with appellate review, given how decisively the First Circuit handled similar stays for other countries following the Supreme Court’s ruling.