A federal judge has struck down the Trump administration's USCIS adjudication pause for nationals of 39 countries, ordering the agency to restart work permits, green cards, asylum claims and naturalization cases that had been frozen for months. Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island issued the order on June 5 and finalized it on June 11, wiping out a set of internal policies that immigration lawyers say had stranded hundreds of thousands of pending applications.
What the court vacated
McConnell's ruling voided three U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services policy documents — known inside the agency as PM 602-0192, PM 602-0194 and PA 2025-26 — that told officers when to pause, slow or apply extra scrutiny to filings from people the government had labeled "high risk." The same memos created an asylum hold policy and a re-review procedure that let already-approved cases be reopened. The court found USCIS adopted the changes without the public notice-and-comment process federal law requires and never gave a reasoned explanation for the abrupt shift.
The freeze swept in nationals of 39 countries on the administration's expanded travel-restriction list, along with foreign nationals holding documents issued or endorsed by the Palestinian Authority. "These were people who had already cleared background checks and biometrics and were just waiting for a signature," said an immigration attorney in Providence who represents several clients caught in the pause. "The machine simply stopped, and nobody would tell them why."
What restarts now
Under the order, affirmative asylum interviews and decisions should resume nationwide, and adjustment-of-status, travel-document, work-permit and naturalization cases held under the country-based policies are supposed to return to ordinary processing. Lawyers caution that the practical timeline is murky: USCIS must still re-queue files that were administratively shelved, and some applicants have aged out of work authorization or seen medical exams expire while their cases sat untouched.
Advocacy groups in New England that brought the challenge estimate the holds touched well over a hundred thousand filings, though the government has not released a precise figure. A senior administration official familiar with the matter said the Justice Department is reviewing the decision and may appeal or ask for a stay, arguing the policies fell squarely within the executive branch's authority to set immigration-screening priorities.
Even a clean restart will not undo the human cost of the freeze. Several applicants lost jobs when their employment authorization lapsed mid-pause, and others missed naturalization ceremonies that would have let them vote in upcoming elections. Legal-aid organizations from Rhode Island to the Pacific Northwest say they spent months fielding panicked calls from clients who had no way to learn whether their files were still moving. "The damage isn't only the delay," said a staff attorney at a nonprofit clinic that joined the suit. "It's the months of not knowing, the plans people couldn't make, the trust in the system that doesn't come back overnight."
Another courtroom setback
The decision is the latest in a run of legal losses for the administration's immigration agenda. A federal judge this month voided the president's $100,000 H-1B visa fee as an unlawful tax, and the Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling within days on the White House effort to end birthright citizenship. Even as the courts push back, Congress has handed the administration fresh enforcement money through the $70 billion Secure America Act, leaving immigration policy split between a well-funded enforcement push and a string of judicial defeats on processing and benefits.
For applicants, the ruling lands as a rare piece of good news in a system that has felt frozen in place. A Rhode Island woman from Sudan who has waited 14 months for an asylum decision said her lawyer called the morning the order was finalized. "I have been afraid to plan anything — a job, a lease, my daughter's school," she said through a translator. "Now maybe there is a date." Whether that date holds depends on the next move from the Justice Department, which has until later this summer to decide how hard it wants to fight.