The Supreme Court ordered lower court judges in June to stop blocking Trump's TPS terminations.
Judge Allison Burroughs answered by declaring Trump's termination void just weeks later.
Now a reckoning is heading her way that a sitting judge cannot simply shrug off.
The Supreme Court Drew a Line and Burroughs Crossed It Anyway
Judge Allison Burroughs holds a seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
Barack Obama put her there in 2014.
On Friday she issued a fresh administrative stay blocking the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for Somali nationals.
This isn't her first attempt.
Back in March, Burroughs already froze the termination once, and the case has dragged through litigation ever since.
Then in June the Supreme Court ruled in Mullin v. Doe and shut the door on exactly that kind of interference.
The justices ruled that the TPS law strips courts of the power to referee non-constitutional challenges to a termination decision.
Translation for anyone who isn't a lawyer: judges don't get a vote on whether TPS ends.
Congress already settled that when it wrote the law.
Burroughs found a workaround anyway.
African Communities Together, the group behind the lawsuit, retooled its case around the Fifth Amendment, claiming the termination was racially rigged from the start.
Burroughs granted them exactly what they asked for within days.
Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan looked at the filing and didn't like what he found.
Wessan wrote that Burroughs had entered a "novel administrative stay," then paraphrased her own order as declaring the termination void while she sorts out the claims.
DHS General Counsel James Percival was even blunter.
Percival said there was no real debate about what was happening in these TPS cases, then called it defiance, obstruction, and delay.
Andy Ogles Just Answered Burroughs With Articles of Impeachment
Enter Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn.
Ogles filed articles of impeachment accusing Burroughs of steamrolling federal law and defying the nation's highest court.
The resolution claims Burroughs used unfounded discrimination allegations as a loophole around Mullin v. Doe, aimed at an administration that has ended every TPS designation it inherited.
Ogles has done this before.
He went after Judge John Bates for blocking Trump's transgender policy.
He went after Judge Theodore Chuang for blocking DOGE's foreign aid cuts.
He piled onto the effort against Judge James Boasberg, the Obama appointee at the center of the deportation flight fights.
None of those resolutions have removed a single judge yet.
Impeaching a federal judge takes a majority in the House and two thirds of the Senate.
That bar has never been cleared for a sitting district judge over a policy dispute.
House Republican leaders know it.
Some, like California Rep. Darrell Issa, have publicly said they set a high bar for impeaching judges and don't think the case is there yet.
Ogles isn't waiting for a consensus.
He told Fox News Digital, "Judge Burroughs must be impeached."
That's the whole mission, stated plainly.
Why This Fight Reaches Far Past One Somali TPS Case
Somalia's TPS caseload is small next to the broader Somali population in the U.S.
The stakes here are not.
The Supreme Court, DHS, and Congress all say termination decisions are off limits to judges.
Every workaround a judge invents, Fifth Amendment claims, racial motivation theories, procedural technicalities, becomes the new playbook for blocking Trump on immigration nationwide.
If Burroughs gets away with it here, expect the same move on the next TPS termination working through federal court.
Ogles knows the math is against him in the House.
He's betting the paperwork keeps pressure on Speaker Johnson and forces Republicans to answer one question publicly: do judges answer to the Supreme Court, or to no one.
Somebody in that chamber is about to find out which one it is.
Sources:
- Elizabeth Elkind, "Obama-appointed judge faces fresh impeachment threat after blocking Trump TPS order for Somalis," Fox News, August 3, 2026.
- Joseph Chalfant, "Rep. Andy Ogles Moves to Impeach Obama-Appointed Judge Blocking TPS Terminations," Townhall, August 2, 2026.
- David Manney, "Ogles Moves to Impeach the Judge Keeping Somalia TPS Alive," PJ Media, August 3, 2026.
- "Federal judge blocks Trump admin from ending TPS for Somali migrants despite SCOTUS ruling," The Post Millennial, August 2026.
- "Judge Burroughs blocks Somalia TPS end over Fifth Amendment claims," Fox News, August 2026.
