A federal judge cleared the way for the Trump administration to deport nearly 1,100 undocumented Somali nationals

A federal judge cleared the way this Friday for the government of President Donald Trump to deport nearly 1,100 undocumented Somalians who resided and worked in the United States under legal protections against expulsion.

Judge Allison Burroughs, in Boston courts, allowed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to end the designation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somalia, after the U.S. Supreme Court authorized the government in June to suspend similar protections for thousands of illegal immigrants from Haiti and Syria.

In that ruling, the conservative majority of the highest court determined that lower court judges lack the authority to block DHS measures aimed at withdrawing humanitarian immigration protection for migrants from 13 nations.

Last week, two other judges allowed the Trump administration to do the same with the TPS for citizens of South Sudan and Myanmar. Only the cancellation of TPS for Ethiopia remains blocked by the courts. The termination of that protection for Somalis had been announced in January of this year by then-Secretary Kristi Noem.

For their part, the plaintiffs argued that the decision to end TPS for Somalia was driven by Trump's prejudices against non-white immigrants, noting that the president had used derogatory terms to refer to Somalis, calling them "garbage" and "people with low IQs".

Even after the Supreme Court ruled, Burroughs —a judge appointed by former President Obama— issued an order that continued to temporarily block the end of TPS for Somalis while considering whether to allow the plaintiffs to challenge the DHS action on grounds not addressed by the Supreme Court ruling, but this Friday she could no longer contradict the highest court.