Judge Finds DHS Violated the Law By Freezing Legal Immigration

David J. Bier

Today, Chief Judge John McConnell of the District of Rhode Island vacated four Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policies in Dorcas v. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). USCIS memoranda had frozen nearly all legal immigration benefits—everything from work permits to visa petitions and naturalization—for citizens of 39 countries, primarily affecting people already in the United States. 

I had testified about this ban before the US Senate, calling it one of the largest immigration frauds in American history as it involved taking money from applicants without rendering the services they paid for. Even Sen. John Kennedy (R‑LA) was shocked at the brazen misconduct. I estimated that the agency had received over $1 billion in fees from the over two million applications that it was refusing to process. 

Under Director Joseph Edlow, USCIS has issued a series of policy memoranda that: 

1. halted all asylum adjudications until March 30, 2026, when it restarted them for “non-high-risk countries”; 
2. suspended adjudications on all benefit applications (green cards, work permits, and naturalization) for nationals of 39 countries;
3. ordered re-review of already-approved benefits for those nationals who entered on or after January 20, 2021; and 
4. directed adjudicators to treat an applicant’s country of origin as a “significant negative factor” in discretionary decisions.

The court found that the policies were unlawful for the following reasons. 

First, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) uses mandatory “shall” language requiring USCIS to adjudicate asylum applications within 180 days, naturalization applications within 120 days, and employment authorization and adjustment of status applications pursuant to specific regulatory timelines. USCIS has no statutory authority to simply stop adjudicating. The court also found that Section 202 of the INA prohibits nationality-based discrimination for green card applicants. 

Second, Judge McConnell found three independent Administrative Procedure Act failures. USCIS provided no rational connection between two crimes committed by Afghan nationals cited in support of the memo and freezing adjudications for 39 countries plus all asylum applications. It also ignored serious reliance interests of people who had built lives, careers, and families in reasonable expectation that their applications would be processed, and its stated national security rationale was pretextual. 

USCIS provided no evidence regarding the national security threats from these countries, which Cato has extensively researched. After meeting with President Trump, then–DHS Secretary Kristi Noem described immigrants as “killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies” and said “WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.” Noem posted, and Trump shared, these comments literally the day before and the day of the policies’ implementation. The judge also noted the internal inconsistency of exempting athletes for the World Cup and Olympics and medical physicians from the hold while claiming national security necessity for everyone else.

Unfortunately, this decision did not consider and leaves in place all the restrictions on visa issuances for applicants outside the United States. Still, half of all legal immigrants (as measured by 2024 flows) are blocked by the State Department’s 75-country visa processing freeze and the presidential proclamation blocking entry for nationals of 39 countries. It also did not consider the recent effort to require legal immigrants inside the United States to leave (and potentially be subject to these policies). 

Moreover, it’s highly likely that the government will appeal the order. Until then, the challengers have achieved a major win over the most anti-legal immigration administration in a century.