The Trump administration acted unlawfully when it barred applicants from 39 travel-ban countries from receiving decisions on asylum, work permits, green cards and citizenship, a US federal judge ruled on Friday.
Chief District Judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, ruled that the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had adopted a series of unlawful policies against people from 39 African, Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern countries.
He was ruling on a lawsuit filed in March by a coalition of immigrant service organisations and labour unions challenging a suite of policies adopted starting in November by USCIS, which is part of the US Department of Homeland Security.
Those measures placed a hold on processing immigration benefit applications from people in the 39 countries subject to President Donald Trump’s full or partial travel bans, which he has justified on vetting and security grounds. Green cards grant foreign nationals permanent resident status.
Judge McConnell, who was appointed by Democratic president Barack Obama, said those policies “threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo.”
Among the countries on Mr Trump's full or partial travel bans are several Middle Eastern nations including Syria, Yemen, Iran and Palestine.
“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,” the judge wrote.
