Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, REMEDIES, DAMAGES—D.R.I.: USCIS denied stay of order vacating policies affecting immigrants from 39 nations, (Jul 16, 2026)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

“This case stands for the quite unremarkable proposition that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) cannot arbitrarily shut down the legal immigration system for individuals from thirty-nine African, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries.”

Denying the government’s motion for a stay pending appeal of its decision vacating a series of policies adopted by USCIS that, among other things, categorically barred individuals from 39 African, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries from obtaining final decisions on their asylum, work permit, green card, and citizenship applications, a federal court in Rhode Island found the government failed to show it was likely to succeed on the merits of its appeal or to demonstrate it would be irreparably injured absent a stay. Its prior order, said the court, “simply told the Government that it must follow the law in processing immigration benefits requests, and ‘an agency is not harmed by an order prohibiting it from violating the law’” (Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, No. 26-cv-JJM-PAS (D.R.I. July 15, 2026)).

After USCIS adopted the policies at issue here, a coalition of nonprofit organizations and labor unions representing immigrants impacted by the polices sued, arguing the agency’s actions violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) because they were contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious. Agreeing, the court, in a June order, vacated the policies in their entirety. The government appealed the order and then sought a stay pending appeal.

Likely to succeed on the merits. In support of its argument that it was likely to succeed on the merits of its appeal, the government first claimed the court lacked jurisdiction to review the challenged policies. Disagreeing, the court noted that the government “repackages many of the same jurisdictional challenges that it previously raised in its Cross-Motion for Summary Judgment,” which the court had rejected.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court, in Mullin v. Doe, which was released after the court’s June order, held that 8 U.S.C. § 1254a(b)(5)(A), a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), barred judicial review over “all non-constitutional claims” brought by Haitian and Syrian nationals challenging the DHS Secretary’s termination of their countries’ Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation, that decision, said the court here, touched on a different jurisdiction-stripping provision of the INA.

If anything, the court observed, “that decision reaffirms the Supreme Court’s decades-long distinction, first drawn in McNary v. Haitian Refugee Ctr., Inc., 498 U.S. 479 (1991), between the ‘direct review of individual denials’ of applications and ‘general collateral challenges to [unlawful] practices and policies used by the agency in processing applications.’” Rather than challenging a single act or a ruling on any individual application, the court continued, the plaintiffs here lodged general collateral challenges to the unlawful practices and policies used by USCIS in processing applications, “which fits neatly into the category of claims that the Supreme Court has concluded can proceed in federal court.”

APA violation. Challenging the court’s holding that USCIS’s policies are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious, the government claimed “[t]he Court erred in addressing arguments not advanced by Plaintiffs, and that were not raised or briefed by the parties in the case before it.” Unpersuaded, the court noted that the plaintiffs consistently argued that the policies, including the Country-Specific Factors Policy, “contravene numerous provisions in the INA that specify how USCIS should conduct specific benefit adjudications” and specifically pointed to Section 1152(a)(1)(A) as an example of criteria that Congress has prohibited USCIS from considering.

As it had explained in its prior order, the court noted that Section 1152(a)(1)(A), which provides that, with limited exceptions, “no person shall receive any preference or priority or be discriminated against in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of the person’s race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence,” directly relates to the policies at issue here as it bears on plaintiffs’ applications for adjustment of status and work authorization. The court also noted that it previously found the Country-Specific Factors Policy, which discriminates against individuals on the basis of their nationality, “plainly contravene[d] the requirements of Section 1152(a)(1)(A),” “at least as applied to the processing of adjustment of status and employment authorization applications.”

Pretext argument. The government next argued that the court erred in finding USCIS’s actions to be pretextual, in violation of the APA, because “in Trump v. Hawaii, the Supreme Court rejected the same extra-record, allegations-of-animus that the Court relied on here.” According to the government, Hawaii set forth a “rational basis” standard of review the court should have applied such “that the animus claim could only succeed if it is ‘impossible to discern a relationship to legitimate state interest[s],’ or that the policy is ‘inexplicable by anything but animus.’”

The challenged policies, the government continued, should have been allowed to stand since it “‘cannot be said that it is impossible to discern a relationship to legitimate state interests or that the polic[ies] [are] inexplicable by anything but animus’” and because they “‘plausibly related to the Government’s stated objective to protect the country and improve vetting processes.’”

Noting that Hawaii did not consider an arbitrary and capricious claim under the ADA, the court found it “hard to see how the Government’s rational-basis standard can be extrapolated from Hawaii and applied here where the Court did not even address Plaintiffs’ constitutional claims.” Nor did the government ever argue that such a rational-basis test should be applied to the APA claims.

Timeframe argument. Rejecting next the government’s argument the court had concluded that adjudication of immigration benefit requests were required within a certain timeframe, the court pointed out that it instead “recognized that the relevant statutes and regulations governing USCIS’s processing of applications for asylum, withholding of removal, adjustment of status, employment authorization, and naturalization each contained mandatory language, such as ‘shall,’ that imposed a ‘nondiscretionary duty’ on USCIS to adjudicate those applications.”

While the relevant statute or regulation does sometimes provide that an application “shall” be adjudicated within a certain time period, the court explained that it “did not state that USCIS must adjudicate any application within those time periods, and the Government’s argument otherwise misses the forest for the trees.” Based on all this, the court found no reason to disturb its ruling that the challenged policies are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious.

Vacatur as proper remedy. Finally, while the government claimed it is likely to prevail on appeal because the court’s vacatur of the policies is not necessary to redress the injuries and conflicts with the Supreme Court’s 2025 Trump v. CASA, Inc., decision, the court pointed out that the government did not previously argue that vacatur itself contravened CASA. Rather, it challenged the court’s ability to grant a permanent injunction to those other than the plaintiffs that were before it. Noting that it declined to grant the plaintiffs any such injunction, the court found the government’s “newfound vacatur argument is therefore waived at this stage in the litigation.” Further, said the court, “nothing in CASA forecloses the ability of a court to vacate an agency policy under the APA.”

Irreparable injury. Nor, said the court, did the government show it would be irreparably injured absent a stay. Pointing to the government’s own words that USCIS, following the June order, had “to make discretionary immigration decisions under circumstances that the agency has determined may be inadequate to protect national-security and public-safety interests,” and that “immigration benefits may be granted before relevant, potentially significant, security concerns are identified and resolved,” the court found this speculative at best.

The court also found it “difficult to take seriously the Government’s position that it will suffer ‘immediate’ harm, given that it waited two weeks after the Court issued its decision to file the present ‘emergency’ motion for a stay” and there was no indication any irreparable harm occurred within those two weeks.

Any showing of irreparable harm was also severely undercut by a new declaration by the USCIS deputy director that “[t]he main harm” of the court’s June order is that USCIS will have to adjudicate cases for individuals from “identified” “high-risk countries” that purportedly “possess little to no credible identity management infrastructure.” While she cited 10 examples of “countries impacted by the vacated hold policies” and explained the purported security “risks posed by each country,” three of the 10 “high-risk countries” were not among the 39 countries subject to the policies.

Plaintiffs’ interest and public interest. Finally, the court noted that it had already identified the considerable harm that the plaintiffs, their members, and their clients faced during the more than six months that the policies were in effect including that many “lost jobs, lost income, and lost the ability to care for their families.” Further, the policies are not limited to the plaintiffs and their members and their consequences “have been felt in every corner of the country by immigrants, their families, their employers, and their communities.”

While the government argued that because immigration benefit requests already take a long time to be processed, the difference in adjudication times should any hold be put back in place is “likely to be marginal for many applicants,” it declined to provide an estimate as to how long this hold is supposed to last. “That the Government ‘does not address in any meaningful way’ the ‘immediate, predictable’ harms that even a short delay in adjudicating benefit requests would cause ultimately ‘weigh[s] heavily against a stay,’” said the court, denying the government’s motion.

The case is No. 26-cv-JJM-PAS.

Judge: McConnell, J., Jr.

Attorneys: Kevin Love Hubbard (DeLuca, Weizenbaum, Barry & Revens) for Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island, Refugee Dream Center, Service Employees International Union, International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, African Communities Together, Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts, Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, and American Gateways. U.S. Department of Justice, for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Joseph Edlow, Department of Homeland Security, and Markwayne Mullin.

Companies: Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island; Refugee Dream Center; Service Employees International Union; International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America; African Communities Together; Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts; Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans; American Gateways

Cases: RemediesDamages Immigration RhodeIslandNews GCNNews