Ogles Targets Obama Judge for Impeachment Over Somali TPS
“SCOTUS made it very clear that lower courts cannot suspend TPS. Yet, an Obama-appointed judge is defying the Court and the Constitution.”
Republican Rep. Andy Ogles (TN-05) announced he will file articles of impeachment Monday against U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs after she again blocked the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somali migrants.
Ogles accused the Obama-appointed judge of defying the Supreme Court and using her position to obstruct President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.
On Monday I will file Articles of Impeachment against Judge Allison Burroughs for her unconstitutional act of Judicial Activism!!!
Enough is enough, Americans First NOT 3rd world migrants. https://t.co/r50Q8Wor8n— Rep. Andy Ogles (@RepOgles) August 1, 2026
An Ogles spokesman argued that Burroughs crossed the line from reviewing the administration’s policy to openly resisting both the president and the nation’s highest court.
“SCOTUS made it very clear that lower courts cannot suspend TPS. Yet, an Obama-appointed judge is defying the Court and the Constitution in an attempt to subvert the will of the President. This judicial activist’s obstruction of the people’s will must be stopped. Judge Burroughs must be impeached.”
Burroughs issued a new administrative stay Friday after African Communities Together and other plaintiffs amended their lawsuit to argue that the administration’s decision violated the Fifth Amendment. The lawsuit alleges that the termination of Somalia’s TPS designation was driven by racial and national-origin discrimination.
The new filing came after the Supreme Court’s June decision in Mullin v. Doe, which sharply restricted the ability of lower courts to stop TPS terminations based on non-constitutional claims. The First Circuit subsequently reversed similar stays involving TPS for Ethiopia and South Sudan. The Somali plaintiffs contend that their amended constitutional claims make their case different.
Burroughs first paused the administration’s termination of Somalia’s TPS designation in March. That order allowed more than 1,000 Somali migrants to retain work authorization and protection from deportation while the litigation continued.
The latest stay drew an immediate response from Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival.
Judge Allison Burroughs just entered yet another order preventing the termination of Somalia TPS. There is no serious debate about what is going on in these cases—defiance, obstruction, and delay.
— James Percival (@DHSGenCounsel) July 31, 2026
Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan echoed that criticism, arguing that four of the plaintiffs’ five claims are already foreclosed by the Supreme Court’s decision and called the remaining claim “frivolous.” He said Burroughs’ stay had effectively declared the administration’s termination “void” while she considered whether any claim could support a longer pause.
Filing articles will begin the process, but removing Burroughs would require considerably more. The House may impeach a federal official by a simple majority vote. The Senate would then conduct a trial, where two-thirds of the senators present would have to vote to convict and remove her from office. Only 15 federal judges have ever been impeached in American history, and only eight were convicted and removed.
Ogles has now put the option Republican leaders usually avoid directly on the table. Filing the articles Monday is the easy part. Convincing the House, and eventually two-thirds of the Senate, to punish Burroughs for her ruling will be the real test.
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Comments
God impeach someone already. I’m tired of this crap. I don’t care if she isn’t convicted, Make an example of her and then impeach the rest of the assholes who are putting politics before the constitution and the country.
They won’t. The “No kings” movement loves a left wing federal judge willing to spit in the face of the supreme court and the administration. There’s zero legal repercussions for doing so and those judges end up with more power than the president, the congress and the supreme court.
Turd Burroughs, be gone!
Such a homely thing with very dyed hair.
Oh they’ve made it ‘very clear’, have they?
So the Supreme Court is standing by to visit consequences on this lunatic justice, right?
The fact there are zero consequences for doing this crap is exactly why it continues to happen. None of them CARE what the Supreme Court says, or that they will be overruled. Because they get to stick it to Trump for a few weeks or even months before they finally get around to doing something about it.
And then they’ll do it again, and again, and again, because there are NO CONSEQUENCES to being overruled by the Supreme Court.
SCOTUS should bring these judges before them to explain themselves and when they can’t find them in contempt of court.
The premise, that she’s violated SCOTUS’s decision, is simply not true.
Wrong.
No it is absolutely true and her ruling based on these frivolous constitutional claims is clearly an effort to undermine the policy of the Trump administration, as so many other federal judges have been doing on various other issues. Judge Boasberg or Sullivan ring any bells? Too many others to note. And it should be noted that the impeachment of this hack Ogles would send an important message to the irresponsible judiciary, even if no removal results.
It is a freaking lie, and it discredits anything else you say. SCOTUS found that Congress had barred all judicial review of the AG’s decisions on TPS — but it can’t bar constitutional challenges. This is a constitutional challenge, therefore the judge has jurisdiction.
It doesn’t matter what you think of the challenge’s merits; the very fact that it raises the constitution automatically gives her jurisdiction. So she issued a stay, which is a normal thing for a judge to do whenever anyone challenges anything. An appeals court may think the stay was uncalled for and overturn it, but to claim that she defied a SCOTUS ruling is simply a freaking lie.
Quite an unnecessarily unbalanced and offensive response there Milhouse. If you want to disagree with me, that’s fine. But you can’t rewrite my argument to argue against a proposition I never made. That’s democrat level mendacity. I never said constitutional claims were never possible, I said these claims of racial animus were frivolous. They are insults against the executive and offensive to the constitutional prerogatives of a coordinate branch foreclosed by other precedent and the constitution itself. It is simply a thinly veiled attempt by a rogue judge to impose her preferred policy over the president’s. Something beyond the power of a federal judge.
Concise, regardless of what you think of the constitutional challenge’s merits or lack thereof, the mere fact of its existence means that the SCOTUS ruling doesn’t apply and the judge is not defying it. That makes a claim that she is defying it an outright lie.
That’s nothing but a bunch of fucking bullshit and you damn well know it.
Ironclaw, are you claiming that Congress can bar courts from hearing constitutional challenges?! Are you claiming that SCOTUS said it could?! Are you denying that the case that’s before this judge, and for which she issued the stay, is a constitutional challenge?! If you’re not saying any of those absurd and clearly false things, then how can Ogles’s accusation be anything BUT a lie?
It says judicial reviews are barred,..that means all, not the ones a judge wants to nitpick
The statute says judicial reviews are barred. But as the SCOTUS decision explicitly acknowledged, that CANNOT include constitutional challenges. Congress has no power to bar those. Therefore to claim that by entertaining a constitutional challenge the judge is defying a SCOTUS ruling is an outright, inexcusable lie. There is no way out of it. Ogles is a liar and unfit for public office.
Followed by drawing and quartering.
No, it didn’t. It said the TPS statute bars judicial review of all non-constitutional claims. Congress lacks the power to bar judicial review of constitutional claims.
As this post says, “Burroughs issued a new administrative stay Friday after African Communities Together and other plaintiffs amended their lawsuit to argue that the administration’s decision violated the Fifth Amendment.” That is a constitutional claim, so the TPS statute’s bar of judicial review is invalid, and Burroughs is entitled to hear it.
Ogles may believe the constitutional claim is contrived, but that’s neither here nor there. It is a constitutional claim, and that’s enough to get it into court.
Go away.
Millhouse, while technically you are right, you know this is frivolous, you can’t declare a discontinued tps order that was by country to be a racist order just because the people of that country is predominantly one race. There us no evidence that race had anything to do with either granting tps or ending it.
There is evidence. It may not be sufficient to prevail on the merits, but it’s enough to get it into court.
The fact remains that SCOTUS never said a court can’t hear a constitutional challenge to a TPS decision. It couldn’t have said such a thing, because it’s obvious that Congress lacks the power to bar such challenges. Therefore Ogles is a freaking liar and his impeachment motion is frivolous and dishonest and the house should censure him.
We have such schizophrenic courts in America.
The ones that take cases from conservatives continually stretch for heroic distances in order to decided cases on extremely limited claims that do NOT reach constitutional issues, and (when it absolutely can’t be avoided) grant respite to individuals, or at best small affinity groups, but NOT the general public, and (if possible) NOT in any way that can be referred to as precedent by any other person or group with an identical grievance,
The other ones scream “unconstitutional!” at the very first stamping of a little socialist foot.
A 5A due process claim seems entirely specious b/c the constitution requires that where life, liberty or property were directly at stake which is NOT the case for a removal/deportation. Though I’m willing be convinced otherwise I’m unwilling to simply concede that there’s any direct life, liberty, property interest at stake by the Federal government action. Hypothetical risks, potentially posed elsewhere by other actors have zero bearing on the actions of the Federal government.
Arresting someone for deportation deprives them of liberty.
Again, the constitutional challenge doesn’t have to be valid. At this stage it’s enough that it’s there. If it’s invalid then the judge should reject it when she gets around to considering it on its merits. Or an appeals court should overturn her. But its mere existence gets it legitimately before her, and is enough to justify a stay.
‘Arresting someone for deportation deprives them of liberty’. That’s a ludicrous claim on several levels. Every person detained and/or arrested and held for any length of time would qualify under your expansive definition as being deprived of liberty.
Are you suggesting that the Judiciary should simply issue an injuction to halt ALL arrests and ALL detentions? That’s where the logic of this lunacy inevitably leads.
In the context of immigration violations the arrest and detention is part of the immigration proceeding which must play out in its entirety for each person,.exhausting all avenues BEFORE the Art III CT gets to weigh in. Further as the 5th Circuit has held the illegally present alien can be held until deportation.
To argue in support of this Cray Cray Judge here requires:
1. Ignoring SCOTUS condemnation on use of ‘unusual’ injunctions by inferior CT.
2. Ignoring SCOTUS about use of nationwide/over broad injuction.
3. Ignore that there’s been no ‘class certification’.
4. Ignore the clear TPS specific rulings that inferior CT mist retrain themselves to actual constitutional claims raised by individuals at the appropriate stage and not before.
If a particular individual illegal alien (former TPS grantee with expired TPS are illegally present) can find and raise a legally sufficient 5A claim that the Federal Govt deportation/removal in and of itself standing alone will impact their direct life, liberty, property interests then they are welcome to do so. Issuing a broad injuction without a brief and hearing is an an abuse of judicial power. That they’d also do so while apparently waiving the rule requiring a bond to be posted only adds to the existing ledger of chicanery.
I am unwilling to grant any good faith to the Judge, the illegal aliens, their attorneys nor their surrogates. The entire ‘pretend not to know’ and willful blindness routine is well past it’s sell by date.
The Constitution has 27 amendments, so the fun will continue for a while.
The link is to a different case, from a year ago.
The link on “
I don’t care why the POTUS decided to terminate the TPS program for anyone. The only thing that matters is that he has the authority to do so. We elect a POTUS to use his judgement in the conduct of his policies.
The courts have no role in oversight of political decisions. Politicians are elected to make political decisions and they answer the the electorate for them, not to the courts. How many times has SCOTUS backed away from settling a political question for just this reason?
First of all, the president has no authority. It’s the Attorney General whom the statute authorizes to make such decisions.
Second, the AG does not have plenary authority to make such decisions for any reason he happens to like. The valid reasons are laid out in the statute. However the statute also says no court can review his decisions, so effectively he can ignore the statutory limits and get away with it.
However he can’t make any such decision on unconstitutional grounds. And Congress can’t immunize such unconstitutional decisions from judicial review. If the AG decides for unconstitutional reasons to terminate a TPS, the courts can and must overturn him. And that means if someone alleges an unconstitutional reason, a court must hear the challenge and decide whether it’s valid.
A distinction without a difference. The Attorney General has no power that he does not derive from the president’s charter.
That’s not true. The AG”s power at issue here derives directly from the statute, not from the president. It’s not a power that’s inherent in the presidency, it’s a power that Congress created, and granted to the AG.
The AG is, of course, the president’s agent, and exercises executive authority on his behalf, but Congress gave this power not directly to the president but only to this specific agent of his.
In any case, that’s all irrelevant. The point is that Congress couldn’t, and therefore didn’t, bar courts from hearing constitutional challenges to TPS decisions. It only could, and therefore only did, bar them from hearing statutory challenges, e.g. that the AG’s decision was not in accord with the rules the statute itself lays out. Congress seems to have decided that it trusted the AG to obey its rules, but didn’t want the courts getting involved if he doesn’t.
It would not surprise me to find that this judge, and other judges, are using backdoor conduits to lay out what they need to use a temporary stay. It’s amazing to me that the Supremes layout the process to be followed and the leftist Circuit Judges could care less. There is real danger to the Judicial Branch with these types of Judges. TPS was and is “temporary”. Because President Trump is ending it they have pre-determined it must be wrong. Milhouse may be right, but that doesn’t mean that the danger to our country isn’t real because of the politicization of the Judiciary.
“…the danger to our country…” ? We don’t have a country anymore; it’s more of a multiple affiliation of disjointed ideals and differing goals.
The danger to the country is irrelevant. A judge has no right to take that into account. A judge must follow the law and only the law; if following the law puts the country in danger, then it must be put in danger and we must then deal with that danger.
But none of that is relevant here. The topic here is a frivolous and dishonest impeachment motion by a congressman who knows that what he’s alleging is a lie. He is falsely accusing a judge of defying a SCOTUS ruling. He knows she did no such thing. That makes him worse than he’s claiming she is.
Since the Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction, and has already ruled on matter of fact and law on the TPS issue, no lower Court can be petitioned. The president can simply ignore the judge and dismiss any pessimistic constitutional arguments as background noise.
But wait, you say, the Congress can use this to impeach the President. So what. Impeachment is a political process and not a legal one. Democrats will impeach him anyway if they win the congress.
SCOTUS has not ruled on this issue. Therefore the court has jurisdiction and can issue the stay. The Attorney General can appeal the stay, or he can put the TPS on hold until the challenge is heard on the merits, and then if the decision goes against him he can appeal it. He’ll probably win, eventually. But he can’t just ignore it, or he’ll be in contempt and the judge can send US marshals to arrest him.
What part of “not judicially reviewable” do you idiots not understand?
Constitutional challenges are always judicially reviewable. Congress lacks the power to put them past judicial review. And SCOTUS explicitly said so, which makes Ogles a disgusting liar.
Absolutely correct, but just because Alito suggested inviting legitimate constitutional issues doesn’t mean the system comes to a grinding halt. The TPS itself is the due process. So the government can continue as the deportees cannot show likelihood they will win on the merits. Let the hearings go on for as long as the Court wants while we wish them a pleasant journey.
Irrelevant. This judge decided to issue a stay, and that was within her authority. If the government thinks the stay was not justified, it can appeal it. But claiming that SCOTUS said the judge can’t hear this case, and therefore that by hearing it and issuing the stay she’s defying that ruling, and moving for her impeachment for that offense, is an indefensible lie.
The real question is will Trump follow this illegal order?
He damn well shouldn’t
It is a legal, binding order, and if it is not obeyed the judge can hold whoever defies it in contempt, and send US marshals to arrest them. If the US Attorney refuses to prosecute them, she can hire an attorney to do so. The courts’ contempt power is inherent, and can’t be interfered with by the other branches.
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