US ICE: Trump Administration Names Next Africans in US For Mass Deportation

• US District Judge Brian Murphy lifted a legal block that had shielded around 5,000 Ethiopian nationals from losing their TPS protections
• The Department of Homeland Security issued a stark warning to affected Ethiopians after the ruling, giving them two choices
• Ethiopian plaintiffs can still pursue one legal argument that the TPS cancellation was driven by racial or national origin discrimination

A United States federal judge has removed the last legal barrier standing between the Trump administration and its plan to strip Temporary Protected Status from roughly 5,000 Ethiopians living in the country.

US District Judge Brian Murphy issued the ruling, lifting a temporary stay that had previously blocked the termination of humanitarian protections for Ethiopian nationals.

With this decision, Ethiopia becomes the final country on the Trump administration's list of nations whose TPS designations have been fully revoked.

DHS issues warning to Ethiopians

Within hours of the ruling, the Department of Homeland Security made its position unmistakably clear in a post on X:

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"Those with terminated TPS are in our nation ILLEGALLY. They have two options: LEAVE IMMEDIATELY or be DEPORTED."

The department's general counsel, James Percival, echoed that sentiment on the same platform, writing:

"All TPS terminations are in effect!"

The decision arrives weeks after the US Supreme Court ended comparable protections for thousands of Haitian and Syrian nationals in June, a ruling that gave the Trump administration stronger legal ground to pursue its wider immigration agenda. Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has moved to cancel TPS for nationals from more than a dozen countries.

Legal fight not entirely over

Judge Murphy dismissed several claims brought by Ethiopian nationals who had challenged the cancellation in court, but he permitted one argument to proceed: that the move was motivated by racial or national origin discrimination, which would render it unconstitutional.

The advocacy group African Communities Together, which joined the Ethiopian plaintiffs in the legal challenge, warned that the ruling placed lives in danger.

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Ethiopia was first granted TPS designation in late 2022 under former President Joe Biden, after the outbreak of conflict in the country's northern Tigray region. The Biden administration estimated that more than 20,000 people who had been continuously present in the United States since October 2022 would qualify.

The situation in Tigray has since deteriorated again. Reports of fighting and drone strikes have emerged in parts of the region in recent months. Both Ethiopia's federal government and Tigrayan leaders have traded accusations of violating the 2022 Pretoria Agreement, the peace deal that brought an end to a civil war estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of people.

The Tigray People's Liberation Front has moved to reconstitute its prewar regional administration, while Addis Ababa has accused Tigrayan leaders of collaborating with Eritrea and the Sudanese military. The country also continues to grapple with separate armed conflicts in its Oromia and Amhara regions.

Source: YEN.com.gh