What’s Happening

A federal court today invalidated four separate United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) policies that have been freezing immigration benefit applications for nationals of 39 countries subject to the Trump administration's Travel Ban. These freezes, in place since late 2025, have prevented USCIS from issuing final decisions on work permits, nonimmigrant work visas, green cards, and naturalization filings, leaving thousands of employees, workers, and families in prolonged legal uncertainty and facing potential lapses in immigration status and work authorization. The specific policies the decision struck down include the:

• Global Asylum Hold Policy: suspended adjudication of all asylum and withholding-of-removal applications, regardless of country of origin.

• Benefits Hold Policy: froze adjudication of green card, work permit, and other immigration benefit applications for nationals of Travel Ban countries.

• Comprehensive Re-Review Policy: required re-examination of already-approved benefits for Travel Ban country nationals who entered the U.S. on or after January 20, 2021.

• Country-Specific Factors Policy: directed USCIS officers to treat an applicant's national origin as a "significant negative factor" when adjudicating discretionary benefits.

All four policies were vacated by the court and deemed to be an arbitrary, capricious, and unlawful overreach of executive authority.