Saturday, June 6, 2026 - A federal judge on Friday, June 5, ruled that President Donald Trump's administration had adopted a series of unlawful policies that have barred people from 39 countries from receiving decisions on applications for asylum, work permits, green cards and citizenship.
Chief U.S. District Judge John McConnell in Providence,
Rhode Island, struck down a slate of policies that the U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services had adopted that he said left people from dozens of
African, Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern countries in
"indeterminate legal limbo."
He said the immigrants had adhered to the legal processes
that Congress had enacted and USCIS had adopted by regulation, yet had been
"stuck waiting, for months on end, for benefit requests that USCIS refuses
to adjudicate."
The judge, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack
Obama, said the agency adopted the policies without statutory and regulatory
authority and based on "anti-immigrant sentiments that it is forbidden
from letting influence its decision-making."
"USCIS’s hold on adjudications cannot be attributed to
anything that these individuals did wrong; rather, it arises solely by the
happenstance of their birth," he wrote.
The ruling marked a victory for a coalition of immigrant
service organizations and labor unions that in March sued to challenge policies
adopted by USCIS, which is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
"This ruling reaffirms a basic principle: the federal
government cannot shut down lawful immigration pathways or discriminate against
people based on where they come from," said Skye Perryman, the head of the
liberal legal group Democracy Forward, which represents the plaintiffs.
USCIS adopted the policies as part of a ramped-up
immigration crackdown the Trump administration carried out after the November
shooting of two National Guard members stationed in Washington, D.C., which
prosecutors say was carried out by an Afghan immigrant.
The man, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, has pleaded not guilty. In
the wake of that incident, Trump vowed on social media to "permanently
pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to
fully recover," and he expanded the number of countries now subject to
full or partial travel bans under his administration to cover 39 nations.
Countries subject to full travel bans included Afghanistan,
Iran, Haiti, Somalia, Venezuela and Syria. The administration justified the
travel restrictions on vetting and security grounds.
The policies USCIS adopted placed a hold on processing
immigration benefit applications from people from those 39 countries, which
McConnell said "placed the lives of countless individuals on hold, solely
by virtue of their countries of birth."
"But the rule of law has to apply to everyone equally
and, as evident here, USCIS has neither 'followed the law' nor 'done things the
right way,'" he wrote. "Indeed, the agency has violated the very
immigration laws that Congress has charged it with administering, as well as
the administrative laws that govern the agency’s actions."
0 Comments