DHS Accused a Federal Judge of Mutiny After He Defied the Supreme Court Again

A federal judge once forced ICE agents to sit in Djibouti facing malaria and terrorist rockets.

That same judge just struck against the Supreme Court again.

Now DHS says he is leading a mutiny against the nation's highest court.

Judge Brian Murphy Blocks Ethiopia TPS Termination Weeks After Losing at the Supreme Court

Judge Brian Murphy has made a career out of ignoring the Supreme Court.

On Friday, the Massachusetts-based Biden appointee granted an administrative stay in African Communities Together v. Mullin.

The order keeps Temporary Protected Status alive for Ethiopian nationals the Trump administration has been trying to deport for months.

Murphy issued it just weeks after the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Mullin v. Doe that federal courts generally have no business second-guessing DHS on TPS.

That ruling was supposed to end this fight.

Murphy decided otherwise.

This is not his first collision with the justices.

The Supreme Court has already overruled Murphy twice on a separate deportation case, once with a 6-3 stay and once with a rare 7-2 order specifically admonishing him for defying their instructions.

Justice Elena Kagan herself called his conduct defiant.

He kept going anyway.

Murphy was not alone on Friday.

Just hours earlier, Senior Judge Patti Saris, a Clinton appointee, issued her own stay blocking the termination of TPS for South Sudanese nationals.

Two Democrat-appointed judges, one courthouse, one Supreme Court ruling ignored twice in the same day.

DHS Counsel James Percival Calls Out Mutiny Against the Supreme Court

DHS General Counsel James Percival was not in a forgiving mood.

Percival accused Murphy of "mutiny" against the Supreme Court and did not let him forget his history.

He reminded the country exactly who Brian Murphy is.

Percival pointed straight back to May 2025, when Murphy's injunction forced a deportation flight bound for South Sudan to divert to Djibouti instead.

That order stranded ICE officers on a military base there.

DHS says those officers faced malaria exposure and the threat of rocket fire from terrorist groups operating out of neighboring Yemen.

The Supreme Court slapped him down for it then.

He is doing it again now, just with a different set of migrants and a different legal theory.

This is not a rookie judge confused about jurisdiction.

It is the same judge and the same pattern of defiance the Supreme Court has already rebuked on the record.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito flagged exactly this problem last month, calling out lower courts in a pair of opinions for finding workarounds to dodge both immigration statutes and the Supreme Court's own binding rulings.

Thomas and Alito were describing a growing phenomenon.

Brian Murphy is the face of it.

The Constitutional Claims Loophole Both Judges Exploited on the Same Day

Here is what fires people up about this story.

Two Obama-and-Biden-era judges found the same opening and jumped through it within hours of each other.

The Supreme Court's ruling in Mullin v. Doe wiped out Administrative Procedure Act challenges to TPS decisions, but it never touched constitutional claims.

Murphy and Saris both seized on that exception the moment the ruling came down.

That is not a coincidence.

That is a coordinated legal strategy by attorneys who know the merits are dead and are buying time on a technicality instead.

CNN reported openly on the strategy, describing left-wing lawyers actively searching for ways to keep TPS recipients in the country permanently despite losing at the Supreme Court.

The Trump administration has already beaten Murphy twice at the Supreme Court on the third-country deportation case, and DHS has made clear it expects a third win here.

Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan couldn't hide his frustration, telling Fox News Digital he did not understand why some district courts still had not cleared the roadblocks the Supreme Court had already torn down.

That confusion is shared by every American who thought the Supreme Court's word was supposed to be final.

Instead, Ethiopian and South Sudanese nationals stay in the country a little longer, DHS burns more resources fighting the same case for a third time, and the justices will almost certainly have to slap Brian Murphy down yet again.

He has been wrong twice before.

Nothing about Friday suggests he learned anything.

Sources:

• Ashley Oliver, "Biden-appointed judge who slapped down Trump deportation policy previously rebuked by SCOTUS," Fox News, February 26, 2026.
• "Biden judge blocking Ethiopian deportations despite SCOTUS ruling clashed with ICE before," Fox News, July 25, 2026.
• "DHS accuses 'rogue' Clinton judge of open defiance of Supreme Court," Fox News, July 24, 2026.
• Brett T., "Judges Enter Orders Preventing DHS From Terminating TPS for Ethiopia, South Sudan," Twitchy, July 25, 2026.
• "Rogue Judges Are Helping Temporary Migrants Sidestep Key SCOTUS Ruling," The Federalist, July 28, 2026.
• Shawn Fleetwood, "Thomas, Alito Chide Rogue Judges For Ignoring SCOTUS," The Federalist, June 26, 2026.
• Andrew Arthur, "SCOTUS 'Benchslaps' Recalcitrant Federal District Court Judge," Center for Immigration Studies, July 8, 2025.