A federal judge strikes down Trump administration immigration policy affecting 39 countries

BOSTON (AP) — A national justice connected Friday struck down a Trump medication argumentation enacted aft the shooting of 2 National Guard members that made it harder for immigrants from dozens of countries to enactment and participate the U.S.

In a ruling harshly criticizing the administration, U.S. District Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. said the argumentation “threw the lives of countless immigrants surviving successful the United States into indeterminate ineligible limbo,” and helium accused the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services of ignoring the law.

“In enacting its latest migration policies, USCIS: claims statutory and regulatory authorization that it does not possess; makes decisions without the reasoned explanations that it indispensable provide; acts without respect for the reliance interests of applicants that it indispensable consider; and justifies its actions with pretextual concerns of ‘national security’ that disguise anti-immigrant sentiments that it is forbidden from letting power its decision-making,” helium wrote. “In ineligible presumption that means USCIS’s actions are contrary to instrumentality and arbitrary and capricious.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.

The policies enacted aft the National Guard shooting past twelvemonth meant that immigrants from 39 African, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries person been “categorically barred” from receiving last decisions on, among different things, their asylum, enactment permit, greenish card, and citizenship applications.

“This ruling reaffirms a basal principle: the national authorities cannot unopen down lawful migration pathways oregon discriminate against radical based connected wherever they travel from,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which represented the plaintiffs successful the case. “These unlawful policies caused tremendous harm to families, workers, asylum-seekers, and communities crossed the state who were near successful limbo, incapable to work, entree protections, oregon determination guardant with their lives.”

The policies use to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which approves applications for immigrants to enactment and go citizens. The agency, which is wrong the Homeland Security Department, often grants asylum, but lone for those already successful the United States erstwhile they apply. Immigration judges assistance asylum to those who are stopped astatine the border; the ruling does not impact them, and neither bash the policies that sparked the lawsuit.

It is portion of an ongoing effort by the medication to tighten U.S. introduction standards for question and immigration, successful what critics accidental unfairly prevents question for radical from a wide scope of countries. The medication suggested it would grow the restrictions aft the apprehension of an Afghan nationalist fishy successful the shooting of 2 National Guard troops implicit Thanksgiving weekend.

In its question to dismiss, which the tribunal denied, the authorities argued that Congress gave the enforcement subdivision wide authorization implicit migration policy, including “the introduction of aliens into the United States arsenic good arsenic discretion wrong the statutory strategy to confer arsenic good arsenic retreat assorted discretionary benefits.”

“This lawsuit rests connected a singular premise: that a national tribunal should forestall an bureau from issuing the precise argumentation guidance that provides authorities unit with the guardrails indispensable to guarantee consistent, non-arbitrary, and individualized decisionmaking accordant with national law,” the authorities wrote successful its brief.

Immigration groups celebrated the ruling.

“This ruling sets a almighty precedent that the medication cannot disregard the instrumentality arsenic laid down by Congress and cannot arbitrarily barroom migration benefits connected the ground of nationalist root by fiat,” Jamal Abdi, president astatine the National Iranian American Council, said. “Fortunately, this is inactive a federation of laws, and those who uphold America’s values person recourse to situation and propulsion backmost connected specified discriminatory, arbitrary policies.”

Shawn VanDiver, a Navy seasoned who heads a conjugation that supports Afghan resettlement efforts called #AfghanEvac, said the ruling was a “significant triumph for the regularisation of instrumentality and for thousands of Afghan allies and different immigrants who followed each request asked of them.”

“Just this week successful Dallas and Fort Worth, we met radical who feared losing jobs due to the fact that delayed enactment licence renewals threatened their livelihoods, families who postponed education, travel, and homeownership due to the fact that they did not cognize erstwhile their cases would beryllium resolved, and aboriginal Americans who had expected to go citizens lone to spot their applications stall without explanation,” VanDiver said.

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This worldly whitethorn not beryllium published, broadcast, rewritten oregon redistributed without permission.