June 5, 2026
A federal judge on Friday struck down a series of Trump administration policies that had suspended asylum processing and frozen immigration applications for nationals of 39 countries, ruling that the government acted unlawfully.
U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr., who sits in Rhode Island and was nominated by former President Barack Obama, issued the decision in a 135-page opinion. He wrote that the policies threw the lives of countless immigrants into “indeterminate legal limbo” and accused U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) of ignoring the law.
What the policies did
The measures were enacted last year following the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., over the Thanksgiving weekend, in which an Afghan national was arrested as a suspect. In response, the administration indefinitely suspended asylum adjudications and froze immigration applications for people covered by the travel ban.
According to the Associated Press, the policies meant that immigrants from 39 African, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries were “categorically barred” from receiving final decisions on their asylum, work permit, green card, and citizenship applications. CNN reported that the measures left millions of immigrants in the United States without work authorization or legal status for more than six months.
The court’s reasoning
In his ruling, Judge McConnell found that USCIS claimed statutory and regulatory authority it did not possess, made decisions without the reasoned explanations the law requires, failed to account for applicants’ reliance interests, and justified its actions with national security concerns that, in his words, masked anti-immigrant sentiment the agency is forbidden from acting on. He concluded that the agency’s actions were contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious.
The government had argued, in a motion to dismiss that the court denied, that Congress granted the executive branch broad authority over immigration policy, including discretion to confer or withdraw immigration benefits. In its brief, the government characterized the policies as guidance that gave personnel the guardrails needed for consistent, individualized decision-making.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to the Associated Press’s request for comment.
Scope of the ruling
The policies apply to USCIS, the agency within the Department of Homeland Security that adjudicates applications for immigrants to work and become citizens. USCIS grants asylum only to those already in the United States when they apply; asylum for people stopped at the border is handled by immigration judges, who are not affected by this ruling or by the policies that prompted the lawsuit.
Shev Dalal-Dheini, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the decision applies to all pending USCIS cases involving people from the travel-ban countries, not only the plaintiffs named in the suit.
Sources: CNN, Associated Press, The Washington Post, The New Republic.
