Congressman Andy Ogles isn’t playing games anymore. The Tennessee Republican filed articles of impeachment Monday against U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, an Obama appointee who decided her courtroom was the appropriate venue to block President Trump’s efforts to end Temporary Protected Status for Somali nationals, according to Ogles’ public statements. Burroughs issued a stay last week preventing the administration from terminating TPS designations, as described in the congressman’s resolution, claiming the move was motivated by racial discrimination. Ogles responded with the nuclear option: impeachment.
The resolution accuses Burroughs of having “defied the authority of both Federal law and the Supreme Court,” alleging her actions constitute “high crimes and misdemeanors,” per the text released by Ogles. Ogles posted on X: “I have just introduced articles of impeachment against radical judicial activist Judge Allison Burroughs for ignoring the Supreme Court and attempting to force mass migration from Somalia into American communities. America is not Africa’s dumping ground. We will end Temporary Protected Status, remove those who have no lawful right to remain, and put the sovereignty of the American people first.”
Temporary Protected Status was never intended to be permanent, as Ogles noted in his filing. It was designed as a temporary humanitarian measure for people fleeing natural disasters, war, or political instability. The key word is temporary. Yet somehow, decades later, we still have TPS recipients who have built entire lives in this country based on a program that was supposed to last six to eighteen months, according to the administration’s position outlined by Ogles.
The Trump administration’s position is straightforward: TPS designations should end when the original conditions that justified them no longer exist, as stated in Ogles’ resolution. Somalia has been on the TPS list since 1991. Thirty-five years. An entire generation has grown up with this supposedly temporary protection. The administration looked at the situation and determined that continuing to extend TPS for Somalis was no longer justified. That’s a policy decision, made by the elected executive branch, accountable to the American people, per the resolution.
But Judge Burroughs knows better, apparently, Ogles argued. She looked at the administration’s decision and saw racism instead of policy. She saw an opportunity to substitute her judgment for that of the President and the Department of Homeland Security. This is the definition of judicial overreach, the kind of activist judging that conservatives have been warning about for decades, according to Ogles.
Ogles’ impeachment resolution represents a growing frustration among Republican lawmakers with what they see as a judicial branch that has grown too powerful, too arrogant, and too willing to substitute its preferences for the will of the voters. The Constitution gives Congress the power to impeach federal judges for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” and while that standard has traditionally been reserved for serious misconduct, the argument here is that systematically defying the Supreme Court and blocking lawful executive action rises to that level, as detailed in the filing.
Will the impeachment succeed? Probably not, at least not while Democrats control enough Senate seats to block removal. But that’s almost beside the point. The message being sent is that there are consequences for judicial activism, that the Article III branch is not immune from accountability, and that the American people’s elected representatives are tired of watching unelected judges run the country from their chambers.
Providence watches over the bold.
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