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BOSTON (AP) \u2014 A federal judge on Friday struck down a Trump administration policy enacted after the shooting of two National Guard members that made it harder for immigrants from dozens of countries to stay and enter the U.S.<\/p>\nBOSTON (AP) \u2014 A federal judge on Friday struck down a Trump administration policy enacted after the shooting of two National Guard members that made it harder for immigrants from dozens of countries to stay and enter the U.S.<\/p>\n
In a ruling harshly criticizing the administration, U.S. District Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. said the policy \u201cthrew the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo,\u201d and he accused the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services of ignoring the law.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 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 \u2018national security\u2019 that mask anti-immigrant sentiments that it is forbidden from letting influence its decision-making,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIn legal terms that means USCIS\u2019s actions are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
The policies enacted after the National Guard shooting last year meant that immigrants from 39 African, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries have been \u201ccategorically barred\u201d from receiving final decisions on, among other things, their asylum, work permit, green card, and citizenship applications.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis ruling reaffirms a basic principle: the federal government cannot shut down lawful immigration pathways or discriminate against people based on where they come from,\u201d said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which represented the plaintiffs in the case. \u201cThese 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The policies apply to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which approves applications for immigrants to work and become citizens. The agency, which is within the Homeland Security Department, often grants asylum, but only for those already in the United States when they apply. Immigration judges grant asylum to those who are stopped at the border; the ruling does not affect them, and neither do the policies that sparked the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
It is part of an ongoing effort by the administration to tighten U.S. entry standards for travel and immigration, in what critics say unfairly prevents travel for people from a broad range of countries. The administration suggested it would expand the restrictions after the arrest of an Afghan national suspect in the shooting of two National Guard troops over Thanksgiving weekend.<\/p>\n
In its motion to dismiss, which the court denied, the government argued that Congress gave the executive branch broad authority over immigration policy, including \u201cthe entry of aliens into the United States as well as discretion within the statutory scheme to confer as well as withdraw various discretionary benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis case rests on a remarkable premise: that a federal court should 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,\u201d the government wrote in its brief.<\/p>\n
Immigration groups celebrated the ruling.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis 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,\u201d Jamal Abdi, president at the National Iranian American Council, said. \u201cFortunately, this is still a nation of laws, and those who uphold America\u2019s values have recourse to challenge and push back on such discriminatory, arbitrary policies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran who heads a coalition that supports Afghan resettlement efforts called #AfghanEvac, said the ruling was a \u201csignificant victory for the rule of law and for thousands of Afghan allies and other immigrants who followed every requirement asked of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJust 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,\u201d VanDiver said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A federal judge on Friday struck down a Trump administration policy enacted after the shooting of two National Guard members that made it harder for immigrants from dozens of countries to stay and enter the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":1508808,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1502,1447],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1512836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abc-heads","category-abc-national-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2026-06-07 13:06:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[0],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1512836"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1512838,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512836\/revisions\/1512838"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1508808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1512836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1512836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1512836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}