A coalition of 18 US state attorneys general, led by Minnesota’s Keith Ellison, has filed a court brief backing an effort to restore Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somali immigrants.
The amicus brief, filed on October 26 in the case African Communities Together v. Mullin, supports plaintiffs asking an appeals court to overturn a lower court’s refusal to grant emergency relief. They want the court to block the Department of Homeland Security from ending TPS for Somalis. It is the second such brief Ellison has led this year, after one in April.
According to the filing, about 3,850 Somali nationals in the US currently hold TPS or have applications pending. The coalition says the US is home to at least 53,000 Somali immigrants, about 37,500 of them in Minnesota.
The states argue that ending the protection would harm families, local economies and public health, pushing people into undocumented status. They say parents of US-citizen children could face a choice between returning to Somalia alone or staying without the right to work, and that some might avoid seeking medical care for their children.
Somalia was first designated for TPS in 1991 because of the civil war, and the designation had been renewed ever since. President Donald Trump announced in November 2025 that he would end it, and following a Supreme Court decision in June, DHS revoked TPS for Somalis on August 14, 2026. The administration has argued that conditions no longer justify the designation.
Source: FOX 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul (Minnesota Attorney General’s Office).
