A federal judge on Friday blocked Trump administration policies that had frozen final decisions on asylum, work permits, green cards and citizenship applications for immigrants from 39 countries. U.S. District Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. ruled that the restrictions, aimed at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, could not stand as written.
The order lands because it changes the status of applications that had been stalled for people from African, Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern countries. For those affected, the ruling means the government can no longer keep those cases in the same holding pattern while the legal fight continues.
McConnell said the policy had thrown the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo, language that captured how broad the freeze had become. He also accused the agency of ignoring the law, a sharp rebuke that went beyond the usual back-and-forth over immigration enforcement and into the question of whether the government had overstepped its authority.
The policies were enacted last year after the National Guard shooting, when the administration moved to tighten processing for immigrants from the 39 countries. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is the agency that approves applications for people who want to work and become citizens, and it also handles many asylum claims for people already inside the United States when they apply.
The ruling does not sweep that entire system aside. It blocks the policies tied to the agency, but it does not affect asylum decisions made by immigration judges for people stopped at the border, leaving that separate track in place. That distinction matters because the court drew a line between a nationwide processing freeze and the border cases handled in immigration court.
What happens next is whether U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services moves quickly to restart the cases it had put on hold. McConnell’s ruling removes the legal cover for the freeze, but it does not spell out the pace or shape of the agency’s response.
