Judge blocks Trump limits on legal immigration cases

A federal judge in Rhode Island on Friday blocked Trump administration policies that had kept many immigrants in the United States from receiving decisions on asylum, green cards, work permits, citizenship and other legal immigration benefits.

Chief U.S. District Judge John McConnell in Providence ruled that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services unlawfully adopted measures targeting applicants from 39 countries covered by President Donald Trump’s full or partial travel bans. The affected countries are in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

In a 135-page opinion, McConnell found the policies arbitrary and capricious, contrary to federal law and beyond the agency’s authority. The measures had largely barred USCIS officials from granting immigration benefits to citizens of the 39 countries, whose nationals the administration has said are too difficult to screen properly.

The policies were adopted starting in November, after the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C. An Afghan man who was brought to the United States in 2021 and granted asylum in 2025 has been charged in the shooting. The Trump administration cited national security in imposing the restrictions.

McConnell rejected that justification, writing that USCIS “claims statutory and regulatory authority that it does not possess; makes decisions without the reasoned explanations that it must provide; acts without regard for the reliance interests of applicants that it must consider; and justifies its actions with pretextual concerns of ‘national security’ that mask anti-immigrant sentiments that it is forbidden from letting influence its decision-making.”

The judge said the policies “threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo.”

“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 wrote.

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed in March by a coalition of immigrant service organizations and labor unions challenging the suite of USCIS policies. USCIS is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Initially, the measures included a complete pause on hundreds of thousands of asylum cases overseen by USCIS, regardless of an applicant’s nationality, CBS News reported. In March, the agency partially lifted that asylum pause, resuming processing for most nationalities while continuing to exclude citizens of the 39 travel-ban countries.

McConnell said the immigrants affected by the blocked policies had followed the required legal process. They “filed the appropriate paperwork, paid the required filing fees, submitted to the requested biometrics collections, and attended the necessary in person interviews,” he wrote.

The judge said those applicants had been “stuck waiting, for months on end, for benefit requests that USCIS refuses to adjudicate,” even though they had complied with procedures enacted by Congress and adopted by USCIS regulations.

“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,’” McConnell 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.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment, according to The Guardian and CBS News.

The Guardian reported that the ruling came the same day the U.S. Senate voted to pass legislation funding Trump’s immigration crackdown.