A federal judge in Rhode Island struck down a batch of Trump administration immigration policies on Friday, ordering U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to resume processing applications it had frozen for immigrants from 39 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. The ruling, issued by U.S. District Chief Judge John McConnell Jr., accused the agency of exceeding its legal authority and masking anti-immigrant bias behind national security language.
The decision lands as another courtroom setback for the administration's broader effort to tighten entry standards, and it raises a hard question conservatives should take seriously: Can the executive branch defend legitimate security concerns if agencies keep losing in court because they skip the legal steps required to make those policies stick?
The policies at issue were enacted last year after an Afghan national was arrested in connection with the shooting of two National Guard members near the White House over Thanksgiving weekend. The administration responded by freezing final decisions on asylum claims, work permits, green cards, and citizenship applications for people from countries covered by the travel ban. The Associated Press reported that immigrants from those 39 nations were "categorically barred" from receiving final action on their cases.
McConnell's ruling ran 135 pages, as Breitbart reported, and it did not hold back. The judge wrote that USCIS had placed immigrants in "indeterminate legal limbo", not because of anything they did, but because of where they were born.
"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 followed that with a blunt legal conclusion: "In legal terms that means USCIS's actions are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious."
McConnell also denied the government's motion to dismiss. The government had argued that Congress gave the executive branch broad authority over immigration, including "the entry of aliens into the United States as well as discretion within the statutory scheme to confer as well as withdraw various discretionary benefits." The judge was unpersuaded.
The government's brief cast the case as an attempt to prevent an agency from issuing "the very policy guidance that provides government personnel with the guardrails necessary to ensure consistent, non-arbitrary, and individualized decisionmaking consistent with federal law." McConnell rejected that framing entirely.
This was not a narrow win for a handful of plaintiffs. Shev Dalal-Dheini, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the broad ruling would impact all pending USCIS cases involving people from the travel ban countries, not just those included in the lawsuit brought by Democracy Forward.
"It is an important legal victory to ensure that legal immigration pathways remain open and that USCIS is held accountable to doing their congressionally mandated job of adjudicating applications."
The ruling also affects asylum processing more broadly. The Washington Examiner reported that McConnell ordered USCIS to resume processing immigration applications and to reschedule canceled naturalization ceremonies for thousands of immigrants nearing U.S. citizenship. The freezes had touched green cards, work permits, citizenship applications, and other immigration benefits.
The policies applied specifically to USCIS, which handles cases for people already inside the United States. Immigration judges, who grant asylum to those stopped at the border, were not affected by the policies or the ruling.
The administration's original justification was rooted in a specific, violent event: the arrest of an Afghan national suspect in the shooting of two National Guard troops near the White House over Thanksgiving weekend. After that arrest, the administration suggested it would expand restrictions on immigration processing for people from the affected countries.
That sequence matters. A shooting of American service members on American soil is not a trivial event. The impulse to tighten vetting is understandable, and voters who support stronger immigration enforcement are not wrong to want the government to act when security threats emerge.
But McConnell found that the response went far beyond what the law allows. He wrote that the pause "placed the lives of countless individuals on hold, solely by virtue of their countries of birth." The judge characterized the national security rationale as pretextual. Just The News noted that this ruling followed another federal judge's decision last month blocking a similar pause, citing the government's failure to justify broad restrictions based on isolated criminal incidents.
That pattern should concern the administration. Losing once in court is a setback. Losing repeatedly on the same legal theory suggests the legal groundwork is not being laid properly before policies are rolled out.
Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran who heads #AfghanEvac, a coalition supporting Afghan resettlement, called the ruling 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."
That testimony is worth considering carefully. These are not people who crossed the border illegally. These are applicants already in the system, many of them Afghan allies who assisted the U.S. military, who followed every legal step and then watched their cases freeze because of where they were born.
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which represented the plaintiffs, framed the ruling as a defense of lawful pathways:
"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. 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."
Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, said the 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."
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling. Newsmax reported that the judge ruled USCIS had adopted unlawful policies targeting applicants from the 39 countries on the travel ban list, but no administration official has publicly addressed the decision or signaled whether an appeal is forthcoming.
That silence is notable. The Washington Examiner reported that DHS has criticized similar rulings as part of a broader pattern of legal challenges to Trump immigration policies. But criticism of the judiciary is not the same as winning in court. If the administration believes it has the legal authority to impose these freezes, it needs to demonstrate that authority through proper administrative procedure, not through post hoc complaints about activist judges.
Conservatives who care about border security and immigration enforcement, and there are tens of millions of them, deserve an administration that builds policies capable of surviving judicial review. The goal of tightening vetting for applicants from high-risk countries is not inherently unlawful. But the execution matters.
When USCIS freezes applications for 39 countries without following the required legal process, without providing reasoned explanations, and without considering the reliance interests of people already in the system, it hands opponents an easy win. The judge did not say the executive branch lacks immigration authority. He said this particular exercise of it was sloppy, pretextual, and legally indefensible.
The 135-page ruling is a detailed roadmap of what went wrong. The case name, docket number, and full list of affected countries remain unclear from available reporting, but the legal conclusions are sharp and specific. The court found the agency claimed authority it did not have, skipped explanations it was required to give, and dressed up policy preferences as security imperatives.
None of that helps the cause of lawful immigration enforcement. It weakens it.
Good policy and strong legal footing are not enemies. An administration that wants to protect the country should be able to do both, and if it cannot, the fault lies not with the courts, but with the officials who failed to do the work before signing the order.