A U.S. federal judge has struck down a series of immigration policies implemented under President Donald Trump’s administration, ruling that they unlawfully prevented people from 39 countries from receiving decisions on asylum, work permit, green card and citizenship applications.
In a decision issued on Friday, Chief U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. ruled that the policies adopted by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) left thousands of immigrants from African, Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern nations trapped in what he described as “indeterminate legal limbo.”
According to the judge, many affected applicants had fully complied with immigration requirements established by Congress and USCIS regulations but remained unable to obtain decisions on their applications.
“They had adhered to the legal processes that Congress had enacted and USCIS had adopted by regulation,” McConnell wrote, adding that many had been “stuck waiting, for months on end, for benefit requests that USCIS refuses to adjudicate.”
The judge further concluded that USCIS lacked the legal authority to implement the policies and said the agency’s actions were influenced by impermissible considerations.
“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,” McConnell stated.
He also accused the agency of acting outside the law, writing that USCIS “claims statutory and regulatory authority that it does not possess” and justified its actions with “pretextual concerns of national security that mask anti-immigrant sentiments that it is forbidden from letting influence its decision-making.”
The lawsuit was filed in March by a coalition of immigrant service organizations and labor unions, represented by the legal advocacy group Democracy Forward. The plaintiffs challenged a series of USCIS measures introduced after a November 2025 shooting in Washington, D.C., allegedly carried out by Afghan immigrant Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who has pleaded not guilty.
Following the incident, Trump pledged to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover” and expanded travel restrictions to cover 39 nations, including Afghanistan, Iran, Haiti, Somalia, Venezuela and Syria. The administration defended the measures as necessary for national security and vetting purposes.
The challenged USCIS policies effectively froze the processing of immigration benefits for individuals from those countries, preventing final decisions on applications for asylum, work authorization, permanent residency and naturalization.
In his ruling, McConnell emphasized that the government must follow established legal procedures regardless of immigration policy objectives.
“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,” the judge 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.”
Reacting to the decision, Skye Perryman welcomed the ruling, describing it as a reaffirmation of fundamental legal principles.
“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,” Perryman said. “These unlawful policies caused enormous harm to families, workers, asylum seekers, and communities across the country who were left in limbo, unable to work, access protections, or move forward with their lives.”
The ruling represents a significant setback for the administration’s immigration agenda and could allow thousands of pending applications from affected countries to move forward through the normal adjudication process.
