Judge Rules Against Trump Immigration Holds

A US federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration unlawfully blocked immigration applicants from 39 travel-ban countries from receiving decisions on asylum, work permits, green cards and citizenship applications. The decision limits how far nationality-based travel restrictions can be used to suspend ordinary immigration processes.

Chief US District Judge John McConnell found that US Citizenship and Immigration Services had adopted unlawful policies targeting people from African, Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern countries. The measures placed holds on applications from people covered by full or partial travel bans, which the administration has justified on vetting and security grounds.

The lawsuit was filed by immigrant service organisations and labour unions challenging policies introduced from November by USCIS, part of the Department of Homeland Security. The legal dispute centred on whether the agency could stop deciding immigration benefit requests from applicants who had already entered formal legal processes simply because of their country of origin.

McConnell said the policies left immigrants in “indeterminate legal limbo” despite their having followed procedures established by Congress and agency regulation. He wrote that the processing hold arose not from anything the applicants had done wrong, but from the “happenstance of their birth”. The court concluded that USCIS had violated the immigration laws it administers as well as the administrative rules governing agency action.

The ruling draws a clear line between immigration enforcement and administrative exclusion. A travel ban may affect entry policy, but the court rejected the idea that it can freeze statutory decision-making for people already seeking legal relief. For applicants left waiting for months, the decision restores a basic procedural principle: government agencies cannot convert nationality into a reason for indefinite silence.