Obama Judge Blocks Trump Immigration Order Again Despite Supreme Court Smackdown

Here’s what’s happening in Massachusetts, and it should make your blood boil. A federal judge just threw up another roadblock to enforcing our immigration laws, and she did it by essentially ignoring what the Supreme Court already decided. Judge Allison Burroughs, an Obama appointee, issued a fresh stay blocking the Trump administration from ending temporary protected status for Somalia. She did this days after a federal appeals court tossed similar stays for Ethiopia and South Sudan.

The playbook here is transparent. Plaintiffs lost their case, so they rewrote it with new constitutional claims about racial discrimination and Fifth Amendment violations. Judge Burroughs gave them exactly what they wanted with an administrative stay while she sorts through whether any of these recycled arguments hold water. This is judicial activism wearing a legal costume.

DHS General Counsel James Percival didn’t mince words. He called it what it is: defiance, obstruction, and delay. Not a group of well-meaning jurists carefully weighing complex legal questions. A handful of district judges who keep finding creative ways to block deportations and TPS rollbacks no matter what higher courts say. That’s the reality, and Percival labeled it naked political activism.

The Supreme Court already ruled in Mullin v. Does back in June. That decision sharply limited lower courts’ ability to block TPS terminations based on non-constitutional claims. The First Circuit just reversed similar administrative stays from two other district judges using that exact precedent. Yet here we are again, watching another Obama-appointed judge issue another stay in another case that plaintiffs hastily amended to squeeze through whatever narrow opening they think remains.

Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan actually read the amended complaint. His assessment? Four of the five claims are foreclosed by Mullin. The fifth claim is frivolous. He argues this order turns the law upside down because it grants emergency relief despite what he calls legally deficient claims. Judge Burroughs declared the TPS termination void for now while she decides whether any claims justify a more permanent pause. That’s backwards. The correct status quo should be allowing the termination to proceed unless plaintiffs can meet the high bar for interim relief.

You know what’s really happening here? We’re watching a masterclass in how activist judges can gum up the works even after they’ve lost at the Supreme Court. Administrative stays are supposed to be brief procedural tools, not backdoor injunctions that keep policies frozen indefinitely. But when you’ve got judges who view their role as protecting certain outcomes rather than applying the law, they’ll find every procedural trick available.

This isn’t about whether Somalia needs TPS protection. That’s a policy question for the executive branch, which has constitutional authority over immigration. The judiciary’s job is deciding whether that decision violates the law. The Supreme Court already told lower courts they can’t block these terminations based on garden-variety legal challenges. So plaintiffs dressed up their lawsuit in constitutional garb and found a sympathetic judge willing to hit pause again.

The pattern is unmistakable. These aren’t isolated incidents or good-faith disagreements about unsettled law. This is resistance dressed in robes. When the same judges keep issuing the same kinds of stays despite higher courts repeatedly reversing them, you’re not witnessing careful jurisprudence. You’re watching judges who’ve decided they know better than the Supreme Court, better than Congress, better than the elected administration.

Limited government means something. It means unelected judges don’t get to override executive decisions just because they disagree with the policy. The separation of powers isn’t a suggestion. When district judges treat Supreme Court precedent like a minor inconvenience to work around rather than binding law to follow, they’re not defending the Constitution. They’re undermining it.

Wessan hopes Judge Burroughs vacates her administrative stay to allow what he calls the correct status quo to continue. Don’t hold your breath. These cases have baggage now, and that baggage includes a clear pattern of judicial obstruction that survives appeal after appeal through creative repackaging and procedural gamesmanship.

The real question is how long we’re going to pretend this is normal. How many times does the Supreme Court need to rule before lower courts actually listen? How many administrative stays can one set of plaintiffs get by simply rewriting their complaints with new labels on the same arguments? At some point, we need to call this what it is and stop treating it like legitimate legal disagreement.

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