Donald Trump’s administration illegally discriminated against “countless” immigrants by categorically barring asylum seekers, green card applicants and people seeking citizenship “solely by the happenstance of their birth,” according to a federal judge.
The administration unlawfully used national security concerns that “mask anti-immigrant sentiments” to justify a sweeping set of immigration policies that have left “countless” immigrants in legal limbo, U.S. District Judge John McConnell wrote Friday.
His ruling strikes down four policies that have been used to block asylum, delay or deny green card applications and citizenship hearings for nationals of roughly 40 countries.
“In ruling on these motions, 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,’” the judge wrote. “This case serves as a perfect example of immigrants doing just that.”
The Trump administration, on the other hand, has neither “followed the law” nor “done things the right way” when it comes to immigration law, the judge found.
Immigrants have filed appropriate paperwork, paid fees, submitted to biometrics collections and attended legally required hearings and appointments yet are “stuck waiting, for months on end,” without reason, according to the judge.
While accusing immigrants of breaking the nation’s laws, the Department of Homeland Security itself has flouted immigration law while justifying its actions “with pretextual concerns of ‘national security’ that mask anti-immigrant sentiments that it is forbidden from letting influence its decision-making,” McConnell wrote.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services implemented several sweeping policies that effectively cut off legal immigration pathways for tens of thousands of immigrants after an Afghan national shot two National Guard service members, one fatally, in Washington, D.C., last year.
In his ruling, McConnell vacated a policy that indefinitely suspended all asylum claims as well as a “benefits hold” that froze all immigration applications from people impacted by the Trump administration’s so-called “travel ban.”
The judge also struck down a policy that required officials to revisit and potentially revoke previously approved immigration benefits as well as a policy that required immigration officials to consider “country-specific factors” when deciding applications.
Combined, those policies have impacted thousands of immigrants and their families who followed the law only to arbitrarily be held in an indefinite limbo, according to Shawn VanDiver, president of AfghanEvac.
“For months, we have heard from Afghan allies whose citizenship ceremonies were canceled, work permits expired while waiting for decisions, green card applications stopped moving, and families were left in uncertainty despite doing everything the right way,” he said Friday.
Jamal Abdi president of the National Iranian American Council, said the ruling is “welcome relief to so many Iranians and other immigrants who have wondered whether the administration was going to succeed in tearing down their legal status in the United States based on arbitrary, discriminatory restrictions”
“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,” according to Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which joined a coalition of immigrant service organizations and labor unions in a lawsuit to overturn the policies.
In a statement to The Independent, DHS general counsel James Percival called the court’s actions “sabotage dressed in legal clothing.”
“The Left has been running the same gambit with so called ‘animus’ claims since 2017,” he said. “It is sabotage dressed in legal clothing. It goes like this: (1) the admin is racist, (2) therefore a policy I don’t like is motivated by race, (3) therefore it is invalid. They have used it on virtually every Trump era Department of Homeland Security policy.”
Under Trump, immigration agencies have increasingly targeted migrants who are already legally in the U.S. despite the administration’s insistence that officials are targeting the “worst of the worst.” The administration is also trying to strip Temporary Protected Status for tens of thousands of immigrants as well as people who are already under Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervision.
USCIS, which operates under the Department of Homeland Security, has emerged as a key tool in the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, which has turned an agency largely tasked with administering benefits — including handling applications for citizenship, asylum and other lawful status — into another law enforcement arm.
The president’s agenda is facing a tidal wave of lawsuits while his administration overhauls federal immigration agencies and immigration courts in an effort to rapidly arrest and remove 1 million people from the country each year.
While immigrant advocates are grateful for federal courts to intervene, they are growingly frustrated with members of Congress who have “largely stood on the sidelines” and refused to back any serious bipartisan effort to protect people who are lawfully present in the U.S. from the administration’s actions, according to VanDiver.
“The courts have now stepped in. They should not have had to do so alone,” he said.
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