BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Friday struck down a Trump administration policy enacted after the shooting of two National Guard members that made it harder for immigrants from dozens of countries to stay and enter the U.S.
In a ruling harshly criticizing the administration, U.S. District Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. 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.
“In enacting its latest immigration policies, USCIS: claims 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.”
The policies applied to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which approves applications for immigrants to work and become citizens. The agency is part of the Homeland Security Department and typically grants asylum for those already in the United States when they apply. The ruling does not affect immigration judges who grant asylum to those stopped at the border, or the policies that sparked the lawsuit.
“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, which represented the plaintiffs. “These unlawful policies caused enormous harm to families, workers, asylum‑seekers, and communities across the country who were left in limbo, unable to work, access protections, or move forward with their lives.”
It is part of an ongoing effort by the administration to tighten U.S. entry standards for travel and immigration, in what critics say unfairly prevents travel for people from a broad range of countries. The administration suggested it would expand the restrictions after the arrest of an Afghan national suspect in the shooting of two National Guard troops over Thanksgiving weekend.
“This case rests on a remarkable premise: that a federal court should prevent an agency from issuing the very policy guidance that provides government personnel with the guardrails necessary to ensure consistent, non‑arbitrary, and individualized decision‑making consistent with federal law,” the government wrote in its brief.
Immigration groups celebrated the ruling. “This ruling sets a powerful precedent that the administration cannot ignore the law as laid down by Congress and cannot arbitrarily bar immigration benefits on the basis of national origin by fiat,” Jamal Abdi, president at the National Iranian American Council, said. “Fortunately, this is still a nation of laws, and those who uphold America’s values have recourse to challenge and push back on such discriminatory, arbitrary policies.”
Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran who heads a coalition that supports Afghan resettlement efforts called #AfghanEvac, said the ruling was a “significant victory for the rule of law and for thousands of Afghan allies and other immigrants who followed every requirement asked of them.”
“Just this week in Dallas and Fort Worth, we met people who feared losing jobs because delayed work permit renewals threatened their livelihoods, families who postponed education, travel, and homeownership because they did not know when their cases would be resolved, and future Americans who had expected to become citizens only to see their applications stall without explanation,” VanDiver said.}
