U.S District Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. on Friday struck down a series of anti-immigration policies enacted by the Trump administration after the shooting of two National Guard members, which barred immigrants from 39 countries from receiving final decisions on their asylum, work permit, green card, and citizenship applications.
McConnell Jr. criticised the administration, alleging the policies “threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo” and also accused the U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) of ignoring the law.
He said the immigrants had complied with the legal processes, which were adopted by the Congress and the USCIS, but had been “stuck waiting, for months on end, for benefit requests that USCIS refuses to adjudicate.”
McConnel Jr., who was appointed by former Democratic President Barack Obama, wrote, “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. In legal terms that means USCIS’s actions are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious.”
The policies, which were enacted after the National Guard shooting in November last year, had affected immigrants from 39 African, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries.
President and CEO of Democracy Forward Skye Perryman welcomed the ruling, stating, “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.”
