Trump administration wins court approval to deport Ethiopians with expired TPS

A federal judge has cleared the way for the Trump administration to strip Temporary Protected Status from roughly 5,000 Ethiopians living in the United States, ending a legal barrier that had temporarily blocked the deportations. Judge Brian Murphy's decision, issued in August 2026, lifts protections that had shielded these immigrants from removal while allowing them to work legally in the country.

Temporary Protected Status is a humanitarian designation granted to foreign nationals who have fled their home countries because of armed conflict, natural disasters, or other extraordinary circumstances. It provides temporary work authorization and protection from deportation—a lifeline for people whose countries are deemed too dangerous to return to. Ethiopia received this designation in late 2022, after President Joe Biden's administration determined that armed conflict, particularly the devastating Tigray war, had displaced more than 20,000 people who subsequently made their way to the United States. Those who arrived and remained continuously since October 2022 became eligible for the protection.

The Trump administration announced in December that it would terminate TPS for Ethiopians, arguing that conditions in the country had stabilized enough to allow their return. The Department of Homeland Security posted bluntly on social media after Murphy's ruling: those with terminated status are now in the country illegally and face two choices—leave immediately or be deported. The department's general counsel, James Percival, celebrated the decision by declaring all TPS terminations are now in effect. Ethiopia marks the final country where the administration has successfully ended these protections; it had already terminated TPS for several nations in South and Central America, including Venezuela and Honduras, and the Supreme Court had cleared similar terminations for Haiti and Syria in June.

But the situation on the ground in Ethiopia tells a different story. Nearly four years after the Tigray war officially ended in 2022, the country remains volatile. Fighting and drone strikes have been reported in Tigray in recent weeks. The federal government and Tigrayan leaders have accused each other of violating the ceasefire agreement, with tensions escalating as the Tigray People's Liberation Front moves to restore its prewar regional government. The federal government has repeatedly charged Tigrayan leaders with cooperating with neighboring Eritrea and Sudan's military—accusations that raise the specter of wider regional conflict. Beyond Tigray, Ethiopia continues to face armed insurgencies in Oromia and Amhara, its two most-populous regions.

Ethiopian nationals who sued to preserve their TPS status and the advocacy group African Communities Together expressed alarm at the ruling. Diana Konaté, the group's deputy executive director of policy and advocacy, told Reuters that the decision puts the lives of thousands of Ethiopians at severe risk while the crisis in Ethiopia remains active and unresolved. Judge Murphy did dismiss some of the claims in the lawsuit, but he allowed the plaintiffs to continue litigating a crucial constitutional question: whether the cancellation was motivated by racial or national origin discrimination, which would violate the Constitution. That litigation now becomes the final legal avenue for those facing deportation to a country where conflict persists and the security situation remains uncertain.