US judge says government can revoke deportation protections for Ethiopians

A United States federal judge has ruled that the administration of President Donald Trump can revoke legal protections that shielded more than 5,000 Ethiopians from deportation.

On Tuesday, US District Judge Brian Murphy gave the go-ahead for the termination of the group’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a legal category that allows foreign nationals in the US to stay and apply for work authorisation, on the basis that conditions in their home country may not be safe to return to.

Since returning to office for a second term in 2025, Trump has sought to end TPS protections for a range of nationalities.

Tuesday’s ruling removes the final judicial block that had prevented the government from ending TPS for individual countries. Administration officials celebrated the ruling.

“Judge Brian Murphy just lifted the stay of Ethiopia TPS termination,” Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival wrote in a social media post. “All TPS terminations are in effect!”

The decision follows a 6-3 ruling from the US Supreme Court in June that limited the ability of courts to review Homeland Security’s efforts to terminate TPS protections.

While the Supreme Court’s ruling focused on TPS recipients from Syria and Haiti, it also had broader applications for people of other nationalities fighting the premature termination of their TPS status.

Roughly 1.29 million people were living in the US under the protection of the TPS system as of March. They represented 17 countries where the US government had deemed conditions unsafe or unstable.