PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A federal judge on Friday struck down a sweeping set of Trump administration immigration policies that had frozen asylum applications, green cards, work permits, and citizenship cases for nationals of 39 countries — including Haiti, which has been on the administration’s full travel ban list since June 2025.
The ruling in Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is one of the most significant legal defeats the administration has suffered in its campaign to restrict both illegal and legal immigration. It effectively forces the government to resume processing more than a million backlogged applications that had been stalled for months, many of which belong to people who followed every step the system asked of them.
For the Haitian diaspora, the decision carries particular weight. Haiti was among the original 12 countries placed under a full travel ban in June 2025, with all immigrant and non-immigrant visas suspended. When the ban was expanded to 39 countries in December 2025, Haiti remained on the most restrictive tier.
On January 1, 2026, USCIS confirmed that the adjudication pause was expanded to include all 39 countries, freezing all immigration benefit applications, including green cards, naturalization, work permits, fiancé petitions, and asylum. Haitian nationals already in the United States who had filed applications, paid fees, submitted biometrics, and attended interviews saw their cases grind to a halt, not because of anything they had done wrong, but because of where they were born.
What the judge said
Chief U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr., in a 135-page opinion issued from the federal courthouse in Providence, Rhode Island, wrote that the administration’s policies had “placed the lives of countless individuals on hold — solely by virtue of their countries of birth”, according to the New York Times.
The judge found that USCIS had violated the immigration laws Congress charged it with administering and had failed to follow the administrative procedures required of federal agencies. He identified three independent failures under the Administrative Procedure Act: USCIS provided no rational connection between two crimes committed by Afghan nationals cited in support of the freeze and the decision to halt adjudications for 39 countries plus all asylum applications; the agency ignored serious reliance interests of people who had built lives, careers, and families in reasonable expectation that their applications would be processed; and its stated national security rationale was pretextual.
Judge McConnell wrote that the burden of these policies fell hardest on the people who had done everything the system demanded of them. “The court is reminded of a line often repeated in discussions around immigration policy: If people wish to immigrate to the United States, they ought to ‘follow the law’ and ‘do things the right way,'” he wrote. “This case serves as a perfect example of immigrants doing just that.”
He turned that language back on the government itself: “The rule of law has to apply to everyone equally, and, as evident here, USCIS has neither ‘followed the law’ nor ‘done things the right way.'”
Four policies were struck down
The ruling vacated four distinct Trump administration policies: a global hold on asylum applications filed with USCIS; an indefinite freeze on immigration benefit applications; including work permits, green cards, and naturalizations; for nationals of the 39 travel-ban countries; a “comprehensive review” policy subjecting previously approved cases to re-evaluation; and country-specific guidance instructing officers to weigh an applicant’s nationality against them in discretionary decisions.
The policies were enacted starting in November 2025, after an Afghan national shot two National Guard members in Washington, D.C. The man, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, has pleaded not guilty. The administration used the incident to justify a sweeping freeze on immigration processing that extended far beyond Afghan nationals, reaching Haitians, Somalis, Yemenis, Venezuelans, Nigerians, and dozens of other nationalities.
Judge McConnell noted the disconnect between the stated justification and the breadth of the freeze. He found that USCIS failed to establish a rational connection between the two crimes cited in support of the memorandum and the decision to freeze adjudications for millions of people from 39 countries.
He also struck down the “re-review” policy under which immigrants from travel-ban countries who entered the country after 2021 and had already been approved for benefits were subject to re-evaluation, rejecting the government’s claim that re-interviewing those individuals or weighing “country-specific facts and circumstances” against them was justified on national security grounds.
The scale: over a million applications, over $1 billion in fees
The scope of the freeze was enormous. David Bier of the Cato Institute, who testified before the U.S. Senate about the policies, estimated that USCIS had received over $1 billion in fees from more than two million applications that the agency was refusing to process. Bier called it “one of the largest immigration frauds in American history”, the government collecting money from applicants without providing the services they paid for. Even Senator John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, expressed shock at what Bier described as brazen misconduct.
For Haitian nationals caught in the freeze, the consequences were concrete: pending green card applications stalled indefinitely, work permits expired without renewal, naturalization interviews canceled, and families left unable to plan for their futures. Many had been in the country legally for years. Some had been waiting months with no decision, no explanation, and no timeline.
As Judge McConnell wrote: “Over six months later, many of those individuals remain without work, without legal status and without any meaningful ability to plan for their futures.”
Who brought the case
The lawsuit was filed in March 2026 in the Federal District Court for the District of Rhode Island by a coalition of immigrant service organizations and labor unions. The plaintiffs included the Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island, the Refugee Dream Center, the Service Employees International Union, the United Auto Workers, African Communities Together, the Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts, the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, and American Gateways. They were represented by Democracy Forward, the Lawyers’ Committee for Rhode Island, RAICES, Muslim Advocates, and the South Asian American Justice Collaborative.
Milagro Sique, CEO of the Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island, said in a statement: “Today is a good day. On behalf of the thousands of immigrants we serve, we are grateful to Judge McConnell for his ruling. These policies were wrong, plain and simple, and led to needless and profound fear and uncertainty for so many of our friends, neighbors”.
Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, said the ruling “reaffirms a basic principle: The federal government cannot shut down lawful immigration pathways or discriminate against people based on where they come from.”
The administration’s response
James Percival, the DHS general counsel, dismissed the ruling. He blamed “the left” for what he called “sabotage dressed in legal clothing” and characterized the legal reasoning as a formula: claim the administration is racist, therefore any policy one dislikes is motivated by race, therefore it is invalid. “They have used it on virtually every Trump-era Department of Homeland Security policy,” he said in an emailed statement. He did not say how the administration planned to respond, per the New York Times reporting.
The administration has generally reacted aggressively to court losses on immigration — appealing quickly and sometimes enacting nearly identical substitute measures to prolong litigation.
Inside the United States, Haitian nationals who had legally filed for green cards, work authorization, asylum, or citizenship saw their cases frozen alongside those of nationals from 38 other countries. The ruling now requires USCIS to resume adjudicating those applications — though how quickly the agency will comply and whether the administration will appeal or attempt to issue replacement policies remain to be seen.
Separate lawsuits are also pending in New York and the District of Columbia challenging the Trump administration’s suspension of visas for citizens of 75 countries, according to the New York Times.
As Judge McConnell wrote in closing: “USCIS’s hold on adjudications cannot be attributed to anything that these individuals did wrong; rather, it arises solely by the happenstance of their birth.”
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This article was originally written in English. The French and Haitian Creole versions were produced using AI translation software; errors may occur, and the English version is authoritative. CTN also uses AI to convert text to audio.
