Rhode Island Judge John McConnell Strikes Down Trump Policy Targeting 39 Countries

A federal judge in Rhode Island struck down a Trump administration policy that barred people from 39 countries from receiving decisions on applications for asylum, work permits, green cards and citizenship, leaving them in “indeterminate legal limbo.”

“One year after the return of Donald Trump to power, the United States is slipping into an authoritarian state”

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Chief District Judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, said the policies left immigrants “stuck waiting, for months on end, for benefit requests that USCIS refuses to adjudicate.”

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The ruling said the agency adopted the policies without statutory and regulatory authority and based on “anti-immigrant sentiments that it is forbidden from letting influence its decision-making.”

The decision was tied to a ramped-up immigration crackdown after the November shooting of two National Guard members stationed in Washington, D.C., which prosecutors say was carried out by an Afghan immigrant, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who has pleaded not guilty.

The policy was enacted after Trump vowed on social media to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the system to fully recover,” expanding travel bans to cover 39 nations.

In Boston, U.S. District Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. said the policy “threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo,” and accused the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services of ignoring the law.

McConnell wrote that USCIS “claims statutory and regulatory authority that it does not possess,” and he said the agency justified its actions with pretextual concerns of “national security” that mask anti-immigrant sentiments.

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Skye Perryman, president and CEO 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.”

Shev Dalal-Dheini, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Assn., said the broad ruling would affect all pending cases at USCIS involving people from the travel-ban countries, not just those included in the lawsuit.

The Department of Homeland Security spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while the court’s decision forced the federal government to reinstate regular processing and work through thousands of backlogged cases.

The ruling vacated and declared unlawful a series of Trump-Vance administration immigration policies that halted asylum processing, froze immigration benefits, and targeted immigrants based on nationality, leaving “millions of immigrants in legal uncertainty.”

“Court decision in Boston May 6, 2026 | 2:17 PM Cadena 3 Newsroom BOSTON — A federal judge on Friday struck down a Trump administration policy, implemented after the death of two National Guard members, that had complicated the stay of immigrants from numerous countries in the United States”

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Democracy Forward said the court vacated measures that indefinitely suspended asylum adjudications, froze immigration applications for people from countries subject to the administration’s travel ban, and directed immigration officers to treat nationality as a significant negative factor in their decisions.

The court wrote that the administration’s actions “cannot be attributed to anything that [the targeted individuals] did wrong: rather, it arises solely by the happenstance of their birth.”

The decision was expected to allow processing of previously paused applications to resume, restore access to work permits and immigration benefits, and reduce legal uncertainty for affected foreign nationals, according to Erickson Immigration Group.

In addition to the asylum-freeze case, Le Monde reported that Judge Jia Cobb blocked an expedited removal procedure’s broadened application, arguing it could lead people to be expelled wrongly outside any due process, notably without the possibility to prove they have been in the United States for more than two years.