A federal judge in the United States has struck down a set of immigration policies adopted under President Donald Trump’s administration that had effectively stopped people from 39 countries from receiving decisions on asylum, work permits, green cards, and citizenship applications.
Chief US District Judge John McConnell, based in Providence, Rhode Island, ruled on Friday that the policies were unlawful and had left applicants from dozens of countries in prolonged legal uncertainty.
He said many of those affected had followed the immigration procedures laid down by Congress and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, but their applications were left pending for months without any decision.
In his ruling, McConnell said the agency had adopted the measures without proper legal authority and allowed anti-immigrant sentiment to influence its decision-making. He wrote that the delays were not caused by any wrongdoing on the part of the applicants, but solely because of where they were born.
The case was brought in March by a coalition of immigrant service groups and labor unions, which challenged the policies introduced by USCIS, an agency operating under the Department of Homeland Security. The court ruling now marks a major legal setback for the administration’s broader immigration crackdown.
The policy shift came after the November shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, DC. Prosecutors said the attack was carried out by an Afghan immigrant, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who has pleaded not guilty. Following that incident, Trump had vowed to permanently pause migration from what he described as “Third World Countries,” and his administration expanded full or partial travel restrictions to 39 nations.
Those countries included Afghanistan, Iran, Haiti, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Burkina Faso, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, Angola, Benin, Burundi, Cuba, Gabon, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Malawi, Tonga, Laos, Burma, and Cote d’Ivoire.
The administration had defended the restrictions on security and vetting grounds. But McConnell said the resulting USCIS holds had placed countless lives on hold solely because of applicants’ national origins.
He said the agency had not followed the law and had instead violated the very immigration framework it was supposed to administer.