Judge Blocks Trump Immigration Freeze Affecting 39 Countries

A federal judge on June 5 struck down Trump administration policies that had frozen processing of asylum, work permit, green card, and citizenship applications for immigrants from 39 countries, delivering a significant legal setback to the administration’s immigration agenda. U.S. District Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. ruled that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) acted unlawfully by imposing blanket restrictions based on nationality rather than individual conduct, as AP News reported.

Context: The Path to the Ruling

The policies struck down by the court were enacted in the wake of a November 26, 2025 shooting of two National Guard members near the White House in Washington, D.C. One of the members, Sarah Beckstrom, died in what authorities described as a “targeted” ambush. The suspect was an Afghan national who had entered the United States in September 2021 following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

President Trump had already signed an initial travel ban covering 19 countries on June 4, 2025. Following the National Guard shooting, the administration moved aggressively to expand these restrictions. On December 16, 2025, Trump signed Presidential Proclamation 10998, expanding the travel ban to 39 countries plus individuals traveling on Palestinian Authority-issued documents, effective January 1, 2026, as detailed by the Congressional Research Service.

Beyond the travel ban itself, the administration directed USCIS to halt processing of immigration benefit applications from nationals of the 39 countries. This meant that even immigrants already living lawfully in the United States — including those who had followed all legal procedures — were left in legal limbo, unable to get final decisions on their applications.

The Ruling

In a blistering opinion, Judge McConnell — an appointee of President Barack Obama — accused USCIS of overstepping its authority and acting with discriminatory intent. The judge wrote that the agency “claims statutory and regulatory authority that it does not possess; makes decisions without the reasoned explanations that it must provide; acts without regard for the reliance interests of applicants that it must consider; and justifies its actions with pretextual concerns of ‘national security’ that mask anti-immigrant sentiments.”

“In legal terms that means USCIS’s actions are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious,” McConnell concluded, as The Guardian reported.

The judge further noted that “the policy threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo,” and that the hold on adjudications “cannot be attributed to anything that these individuals did wrong; rather, it arises solely by the happenstance of their birth.”

The broad ruling applies to all pending cases at USCIS involving people from the 39 travel-ban countries, not just those included in the lawsuit filed in March 2026 by a coalition of immigrant service organizations and labor unions represented by Democracy Forward.

Reactions from Advocacy Groups

Immigrant advocacy organizations celebrated the decision. Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward, said: “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. These unlawful policies caused enormous harm to families, workers, asylum-seekers, and communities across the country.”

Jamal Abdi, President of the National Iranian American Council, called the ruling “a powerful precedent that the administration cannot ignore the law as laid down by Congress and cannot arbitrarily bar immigration benefits on the basis of national origin by fiat.”

Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran who heads the #AfghanEvac coalition supporting Afghan resettlement, described the ruling as “a significant victory for the rule of law and for thousands of Afghan allies and other immigrants who followed every requirement asked of them.” He noted that just that week in Dallas and Fort Worth, his team met people who feared losing jobs due to delayed work permit renewals and families who had postponed education, travel, and homeownership.

Shev Dalal-Dheini, Senior Director of Government Relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the ruling was “an important legal victory to ensure that legal immigration pathways remain open and that USCIS is held accountable to doing their congressionally mandated job of adjudicating applications.”

Government Defense and Expected Appeal

The Trump administration had argued in its motion to dismiss — which the court denied — that Congress gave the executive branch broad authority over immigration policy, including discretion to confer or withdraw discretionary benefits. The government wrote that the case “rests on a remarkable premise: that a federal court should prevent an agency from issuing the very policy guidance that provides government personnel with the guardrails necessary to ensure consistent, non-arbitrary, and individualized decisionmaking.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The administration is widely expected to appeal the ruling, with the case potentially reaching the Supreme Court.

Broader Implications

The ruling came on the same day the U.S. Senate voted to pass legislation funding Trump’s immigration crackdown, highlighting the ongoing tension between the judicial and legislative branches over immigration policy. The administration’s broader immigration agenda — including mass deportations, a 75-country immigrant visa freeze, and stricter asylum rules — continues despite this legal setback.

For the thousands of immigrants from the 39 affected countries who were stuck in legal limbo, the ruling provides immediate relief, allowing their pending applications for asylum, work permits, green cards, and citizenship to move forward. As NBC News noted, the decision represents a significant check on executive power and reaffirms the principle that immigration decisions cannot be paused or delayed solely based on nationality.

What to Watch For

The key question now is how quickly USCIS will resume processing the affected applications and whether the administration will attempt to re-impose similar restrictions through different legal mechanisms. The case could set an important precedent for future legal challenges to the administration’s immigration policies as the battle over the nation’s immigration framework continues to unfold across all three branches of government.