A federal judge on Friday ruled that Trump administration policies barring people from 39 countries from receiving decisions on their immigration application are unlawful.
The policies include decisions on applications for asylum, work permits, green cards and citizenship, and applies to immigrants from dozens of Asian, Latin American, African, and Middle Eastern countries. It made it harder for immigrants from dozens of countries to stay and enter the country.
In a 135-page ruling harshly criticizing the administration, Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. of the district of Rhode Island said the policy “threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo,” and he accused the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services of ignoring the law. He said people were “stuck waiting, for months on end, for benefit requests that USCIS refuses to adjudicate.”
In the most sweeping ruling against the policies to date, McConnell Jr. said in enacting its latest immigration policies, USCIS claimed 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,” he wrote. “In legal terms that means USCIS’s actions are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious.”
McConnell Jr. also noted that the immigrants affected by the policy shifts had already paid required fees, submitted all necessary paperwork, attended in-person interviews, and been subject to fingerprinting and background checks.
The policies were enacted after the National Guard shooting last year. and meant that immigrants from 39 African, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries have been “categorically barred” from receiving final decisions on, among other things, their asylum, work permit, green card, and citizenship applications.
Ciro Valiente, spokesman for the Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts, one of many plaintiff groups, told GBH News that “the federal court from Rhode Island found that USCIS cannot place immigrants in indefinite certainty simply because of where they were born.”
“What happened in this case [was] that many people were waiting for a decision for asylum, green card applications or even citizenship — they now can get a response on their cases,” he said.
Valiente said some of the organization’s members lost their jobs because they weren’t able to receive employment authorization cards because all immigration document processing is frozen.
“It’s been a nightmare for them,” he said.
“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, president and CEO of Democracy Forward.
The federal government didn’t say whether it would appeal, but called the ruling “sabotage dressed in legal clothing.”
“The Left has been running the same gambit with so called ‘animus’ claims since 2017,” said James Percival, general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security in an emailed statement. “It goes like this: (1) the admin is racist, (2) therefore a policy I don’t like is motivated by race, (3) therefore it is invalid. They have used it on virtually every Trump-era Department of Homeland Security policy.”
Until more is known about whether the government will appeal or abide by the decision, immigrant attorneys and advocates are celebrating.
“It was kind of a mixture of joy and relief when I read the opinion, because he basically gets rid of several of Trump’s adjudication bans that have been in place and have really been wreaking havoc,” said Jeannie Kain, an immigration attorney in Boston. She said asylum clients have already been interviewed by the government, but haven’t been able to get decisions on their cases.
“People have been waiting months and months for decision, not able to work, completely in limbo,” Kain added.
