A federal judge ruled Friday that US President Donald Trump’s administration has adopted a series of illegal policies that have barred people from 39 countries from receiving decisions on applications for asylum, work permits, green cards and citizenship.
U.S. District Judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, struck down a series of policies adopted by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that he said left people from dozens of African, Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern countries in “undetermined legal limbo.”
He said the immigrants had complied with the legal processes enacted by Congress and USCIS had adopted by regulation, yet had been “stuck waiting for months on requests for benefits that USCIS refuses to adjudicate.”
The judge, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, said it adopted the policies without statutory and regulatory authority and based on “anti-immigrant sentiments that it is forbidden to allow to influence its decision-making.”
“USCIS’s seizure of warrants cannot be attributed to anything these individuals did wrong; rather, it arises solely by accident of their birth,” he wrote.
The ruling marked a victory for a coalition of immigrant service organizations and labor unions that sued in March to challenge policies adopted by USCIS, which is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
“This ruling reaffirms a fundamental principle: the federal government cannot shut down legal immigration pathways or discriminate against people based on where they come from,” said Skye Perryman, the head of the liberal legal group Democracy Forward, which is representing the plaintiffs.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
USCIS adopted the policy as part of a stepped-up immigration crackdown by the Trump administration following the November shooting of two National Guard members stationed in Washington, DC, which prosecutors say was carried out by an Afghan immigrant.
The man, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, has pleaded not guilty.
In the wake of this incident, Trump pledged on social media to “permanently halt migration from all Third World countries to allow the American system to fully recover”, and he expanded the number of countries now subject to full or partial travel bans under his administration to cover 39 nations.
Countries subject to complete travel bans included Afghanistan, Iran, Haiti, Somalia, Venezuela and Syria. The administration justified the travel restrictions on control and security concerns.
The policies USCIS adopted put an end to the processing of applications for immigration benefits from people from the 39 countries, which McConnell said “put the lives of countless individuals on hold — solely by virtue of their countries of birth.”
“But the rule of law must apply equally to all, and as is evident here, USCIS has neither ‘felt the law’ nor ‘done things the right way,'” he wrote. “Yes, the agency has violated the very immigration laws that Congress has directed it to administer, as well as the administrative laws that govern the agency’s actions.”
