An Ethiopian woman weeps during an event marking the one year anniversary of the war in Tigray, in the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 2021. A judge has allowed refugees from Ethiopia to lose their Temporary Protected Status in the United States. File Photo by Stringer/EPA
Aug. 18 (UPI) — A federal judge Tuesday allowed the Trump administration to end protections for about 5,000 Ethiopians in the United States.
U.S. District Court Judge Brian E. Murphy denied a request to postpone ending the Temporary Protected Status while a legal challenge by advocate group African Communities Together goes through the courts. It’s the latest in a series of court rulings that remove TPS status for more than a million people.
TPS allows temporary permission to live and work in the United States for those who have fled war, natural disasters or humanitarian crises.
In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the administration can end TPS status for Haitians and Syrians.
Ethiopians fled to the United States in 2020 when war began in the Tigray state of Ethiopia and spread to other parts of the country. The African Union has said that the conflict has killed hundreds of thousands.
The Biden administration granted some Ethiopians protected status for 18 months, and then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas extended it because the war was still going on.
Murphy rejected claims by the Ethiopians’ attorneys that Homeland Security tried to remove the protections illegally.
The lawyers had argued that ending TPS was against their clients’ constitutional rights and that then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem didn’t have the authority to remove the status. They said the attorney general had the power to do so.
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