Federal judge rules USCIS freeze on immigration processing for 39 travel-ban countries unlawful

In late November 2025, following the shooting of two National Guard members near the White House, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services suspended the processing of asylum claims and froze adjudication of immigration benefits — work permits, green cards, and naturalization — for nationals of the 39 countries subject to the administration's travel restrictions. USCIS Director Joseph Edlow said claims would not be processed "until we can ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible." The freeze halted green-card approvals, led to the widespread cancellation of naturalization ceremonies, and left immigrants on time-limited visas at risk of falling out of lawful status through no action of their own.

On June 5, 2026, Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island vacated the policies in a 135-page ruling in Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. USCIS, a suit brought by nonprofit organizations represented by Democracy Forward. McConnell found the freeze exceeded the statutory and regulatory authority USCIS possesses, was arbitrary and capricious, and rested on "pretextual concerns of 'national security' that mask anti-immigrant sentiments that it is forbidden from letting influence its decision-making." The policies, he wrote, "threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo" based solely on "the happenstance of their birth."

The court ordered USCIS to resume processing, a decision that reaches all pending cases involving nationals of the 39 countries, not only the plaintiffs'. The ruling means the agency must also reschedule naturalization ceremonies for thousands of immigrants whose citizenship had been put on indefinite hold. The recordable abuse is the executive branch's categorical, nationality-based suspension of statutorily required adjudications — conduct a federal court has now held to be contrary to law on multiple independent grounds.