The Obama-appointed federal judge Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) threatened to impeach earlier this month over her handling of the Somalia Temporary Protected Status (TPS) case has now ruled for the Trump administration.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs on Aug. 14 denied the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction and lifted the administrative stay that had temporarily prevented the administration from terminating Somalia’s TPS designation.
As Legal Insurrection previously reported, Ogles announced plans to seek Burroughs’ impeachment after she issued another temporary stay while considering amended constitutional claims. Ogles accused her of “Judicial Activism,” while a spokesman said she was defying the Supreme Court and obstructing President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.
The irony now is that the judge critics portrayed as a rogue activist ultimately cleared the administration to proceed.
Burroughs found the plaintiffs unlikely to succeed on their due process and equal protection claims, including allegations of discrimination based on race and national origin. She also rejected their argument that the Homeland Security secretary lacked authority to terminate TPS after immigration functions were transferred to DHS.
The Supreme Court’s June decision in Mullin v. Doe played a major role.
Mullin held that the TPS statute generally bars judicial review of the administration’s decisions to terminate country designations and rejected a similar race-based equal protection challenge. Burroughs concluded that she remained able to consider constitutional claims, but said the Supreme Court’s treatment of the race claim largely dictated the result.
Burroughs didn’t hide her frustration when it came to the Supreme Court’s reasoning.
Discussing statements attributed to Trump about Haitians in Mullin, Burroughs wrote that despite what she called “undisguised racial animus,” the majority “somehow concluded” they showed the administration’s general immigration position rather than an unconstitutional racial motive.
But she also acknowledged she was bound by the ruling.
“Bound as it is to view things through the Mullin prism,” Burroughs wrote, the court could not find statements concerning Somalis sufficient to distinguish the case from the Supreme Court precedent.
The national-origin discrimination claim was somewhat different. Burroughs noted that Mullin did not address the national-origin theory and said the unsettled law left the plaintiffs unable to show the likelihood of success required for an injunction. However, that issue could remain a target in any appeal.
Burroughs also acknowledged that the plaintiffs had made a “convincing showing” that ending TPS could cause irreparable harm. But likelihood of success on the merits, she noted, is the “sine qua non” of preliminary injunctive relief.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) says Somalia’s TPS designation ended Aug. 14. Employment authorization documents in categories A12 and C19 issued under the program are also no longer valid.
The national-origin claims give the plaintiffs a path to appeal, but it is up to the courts to take them seriously enough to stop the clock.
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