Andrew Ogles

A Republican member of Congress is seeking to impeach a federal judge sitting in Boston because she ordered a stay of the federal government’s efforts to end temporary protected status for Somalis.

U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles, a Republican representing a district in middle Tennessee, said Judge Allison Dale Burroughs committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” when she issued an order that he claims skirted the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on judicial review of the temporary protected status for Haitians.

Ogles introduced his lone article of impeachment on Monday, and the resolution was referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.

A spokesperson for Ogles did not return a request for comment about the resolution.

In a series of posts on the social media site X, Ogles called Burroughs a “radical judicial activist” who is “weaponizing the bench to protect invaders.”

“Judge Burroughs is breaking her oath to the constitution and legal precedent,” the lawmaker wrote Tuesday. “Oathbreakers deserve impeachment.”

The U.S. House of Representatives has impeached only 15 judges in its entire history. Recent impeachments include judges who were accused of accepting bribes, sexual assault and committing perjury before a grand jury.

The press liaison for the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts did not return a request asking Burroughs to comment on Ogles’ resolution.

Ogles’ impeachment resolution said Burroughs, who ascended the bench in December 2014 after being nominated by President Barack Obama, “defied the authority” of the U.S. Supreme Court after the high court issued its decision Mullin v. Doe at the end of June.

In that decision, the court said it was barred by law from reviewing the presidential administration’s decision to end temporary protected status for Haitians living in the country unless plaintiffs made constitutional claims.

Following that ruling, a federal judge in the District of Columbia issued a two-page order Wednesday that officially allowed the federal government to end temporary protected status for about 300,000 Haitians living in the U.S., according to the Massachusetts attorney general.

Ogles’ lone article of impeachment against Burroughs claims she entertained “spurious allegations of racial and national-origin discrimination” when presiding over a lawsuit challenging the federal government’s decision to end TPS for Somalis. The Trump administration has been ending temporary protected status designations for various countries across the board, according to Ogles’ resolution.

The resolution does not state the specific case to which Ogles is referring.

However, Burroughs is presiding over a case in which the plaintiffs have pointed to President Donald Trump’s comments about Somalis as part of their arguments challenging the federal government’s decision to end the immigration status for that country’s migrants.

As a wide-ranging fraud scandal unfolded in Minnesota, Trump called Somalis “low IQ people” and “garbage,” according to the complaint filed in March. Comments like these were evidence that federal officials violated the U.S. Constitution, because they wanted “to target and punish Somali nationals based on their race and national origin,” the complaint says.

Burroughs placed the litigation on hold while the Supreme Court decided the case involving Haitians’ temporary protected status.

The Supreme Court’s decision in late June brought a flurry of legal jockeying in the case overseen by Burroughs that led her to say twice in her orders that an administrative stay remained in effect.

Ogles filed his article of impeachment on Monday, the same day the First Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the government’s appeal of the first of Burrough’s administrative stays and urged her to “rule promptly” on the government’s request to lift it.

Burroughs told the parties in an order Tuesday that she planned to decide the motion next week and ordered them to file briefs on the matter.

The “potential consequences” of lifting the administrative stay informed her decision to issue the stay in the first place, she wrote. Temporary protected status for Somali migrants had been in place for more than three-and-a-half decades, according to the judge, and more than 1,000 Somalis could face removal from their families and communities, deported to a country Trump described as among the “most dangerous.”

The judge said she was aware of the decisions of both the Supreme Court and the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

“That said,” Burroughs wrote, “the court will also not abdicate its responsibility to make thoughtful, well-reasoned decisions after affording all parties a full and fair opportunity to be heard.”