Judge strikes down Trump immigration freeze for asylum, green card applicants
A federal judge halted a six-month immigration freeze that left applicants from 39 countries in legal limbo, reopening stalled asylum, green card and citizenship cases.
A federal judge in Rhode Island has struck down a Trump administration immigration freeze that had stalled asylum claims, work permits, green cards and citizenship applications for people from 39 countries, delivering a sharp rebuke to a policy that left thousands of applicants waiting for decisions that never came.
U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. ruled on June 5, 2026, in Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island et al. v. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services et al., No. 26-cv-132-JJM-PAS, that USCIS had placed an “indefinite pause” on immigration benefit requests and “categorically barred” affected applicants from final decisions. He said the policy had “thrown the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo,” and found the agency had gone beyond its authority.
The ruling covered USCIS-administered cases inside the United States, not immigration judges’ asylum decisions at the border, but it is broad enough to reach all pending USCIS cases involving people from the travel-ban countries, not just the named plaintiffs. That means stalled applications may now move again for families, workers and long-term residents who had been unable to advance their cases for more than six months. The court also struck at related measures, including a pause on asylum and withholding of removal applications regardless of nationality, a re-review of already approved cases for some people from the travel-ban countries who entered the United States on or after January 20, 2021, and a Policy Manual change telling officers to treat “country-specific facts and circumstances” as significant negative factors.
USCIS had defended the restrictions as part of a “strengthened screening and vetting” effort. In March 2026, the agency said Proclamations 10949 and 10998 covered 39 countries because they lacked adequate screening and vetting information, and a January 1, 2026 memorandum directed staff to hold all pending benefit applications for people listed in Proclamation 10998 while conducting a comprehensive re-review of approved requests.
The lawsuit was brought by a coalition that included Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island, Refugee Dream Center, Service Employees International Union, the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, African Communities Together, the Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts, the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans and American Gateways. They were represented by Democracy Forward, the Lawyers’ Committee for Rhode Island, RAICES, Muslim Advocates and the South Asian American Justice Collaborative. Democracy Forward said the court found the harm flowed not from anything applicants had done wrong, but from the “happenstance of their birth.”
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