Court Vacates USCIS Benefit Freeze for 39 Travel-Ban Countries

For six months, USCIS refused to decide cases. Applications sat untouched. Clients lost jobs when work permits expired. Naturalization ceremonies were cancelled. All of it happened to people who had filed correctly, paid the fees, submitted biometrics, and attended interviews. The court's opening paragraph put it plainly: USCIS had "neither followed the law nor done things the right way."

That changed on June 5.

The Case: Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. USCIS

The case is Dorcas Int'l Inst. of R.I. v. USCIS, No. 1:26-cv-00132-JJM-PAS (D.R.I. June 5, 2026). Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs and vacated all four challenged USCIS policies.

The plaintiffs were a coalition of nonprofits, unions, and advocacy groups: Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island, Refugee Dream Center, SEIU, UAW, African Communities Together, and others. They represented thousands of noncitizens from Afghanistan, Iran, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Myanmar, and other travel-ban countries whose cases had been frozen or reopened solely because of their nationality.

The Four Policies the Court Struck Down

USCIS enacted these policies through internal memoranda between November 2025 and January 2026.

1. The Global Asylum Hold (PM-602-0192, December 2025)

Paused all asylum and withholding of removal adjudications at USCIS. This applied to applicants of every nationality, not just travel-ban countries. The memo said the hold "will remain in effect until lifted by the USCIS Director through a subsequent memorandum." No such Director-level memo was ever issued.

2. The Benefits Hold (PM-602-0192 + PM-602-0194, December 2025 and January 2026)

Froze all pending benefit requests for nationals of the 39 travel-ban countries. This included adjustment of status (I-485), employment authorization (EAD), naturalization, and other immigration benefits. "Final adjudication" was defined as any approval, denial, or dismissal. No final decisions could be issued.

3. The Comprehensive Re-Review Policy (December 2025)

Required USCIS to reopen and re-examine previously approved benefits for travel-ban nationals who entered the United States on or after January 20, 2021. This reached grants of asylum, adjustment of status, EADs, and potentially naturalization that were already final. The agency claimed authority to re-review those approvals for "national security and public safety threats."

4. The Country-Specific Factors Policy (PA-2025-26, November 27, 2025)

Amended the USCIS Policy Manual to require adjudicators to treat travel-ban nationality as a "significant negative factor" in discretionary benefit decisions. This applied to immigrant-visa-linked benefits, which include EB-1A and EB-2 adjustment of status cases.

Why the Court Struck Down the Policies

Judge McConnell gave three independent grounds, each sufficient on its own to vacate the policies.

Ground 1: USCIS Exceeded Its Statutory Authority

The government tried to anchor all four policies in 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f), the President's power to suspend the "entry" of aliens. The court rejected that entirely.

Section 1182(f) governs who may enter the United States. It says nothing about processing benefit applications for people already here. The travel-ban proclamations themselves "regulate entry into the United States and do not mention any holds on asylum, adjustment of status, work authorization, or naturalization." The court found that USCIS could not "bootstrap presidential entry powers into a broad domestic benefits freeze."

On top of that, the statutes actually governing these benefits impose affirmative duties. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1158(d)(5)(A)(iii), absent "exceptional circumstances," asylum adjudications "shall be completed within 180 days." Naturalization regulations at 8 C.F.R. § 335.3(a) require a decision at or within 120 days of the examination. The word "shall" throughout the INA and USCIS regulations reflects that adjudication is mandatory. An indefinite freeze conflicts with those obligations directly.

The Country-Specific Factors Policy ran into a separate statutory wall: 8 U.S.C. § 1152(a)(1)(A), which prohibits nationality-based discrimination in the allocation of immigrant visas. Adjustment of status and EB-class benefits depend on immigrant-visa availability, so that anti-discrimination rule applies. Directing adjudicators to treat Travel Ban nationality as a negative factor in EB-1A and EB-2 discretionary decisions "directly conflict[s] with § 1152(a)(1)(A)."

Ground 2: Arbitrary and Capricious Agency Action

Even if USCIS had the authority, the court found the reasoning behind the policies did not survive APA scrutiny.

USCIS relied on two incidents: a June 2025 guilty plea by an Afghan national and a November 2025 shooting by another Afghan national. Judge McConnell found that extrapolating "the criminal conduct of two noncitizens to thousands of other noncitizens, from dozens of countries around the world, does not rank as reasoned decisionmaking." Cuba, Venezuela, and Nigeria are among the 39 listed countries. Neither has any evident connection to either incident.

USCIS also failed to weigh the reliance interests of applicants who had filed applications, paid fees, and structured their lives around receiving decisions. The agency's two-sentence acknowledgment that the policies would cause "processing delays" fell short of the analysis the APA requires after "decades of reliance on prior policy."

Ground 3: Pretext and Anti-Immigrant Animus

Judge McConnell applied the APA's bad-faith exception to look beyond the agency's stated national-security rationale.

He pointed to public statements by senior administration officials describing immigrants as "killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies" from "hellholes." The court characterized these as "statements of ethnic hostility and prejudice" reflecting "bad faith and impermissible animus." The court also flagged the carve-outs as evidence of pretext: the policies exempted World Cup athletes, physicians, and others from the same 39 countries. If the nationalities truly posed a security threat, those exceptions made no sense.

Taken together, the record showed "a significant mismatch between the decision the agency made and the rationale it provided."

What the Ruling Does Not Cover

Two critical limits that practitioners must keep in mind.

The State Department's January 21, 2026 pause on immigrant visa issuances at U.S. consulates abroad (affecting nationals of 75 countries) is being challenged in Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. v. Rubio. That case was not affected by this ruling. Clients of yours who need consular processing rather than adjustment of status are not helped by Dorcas.

What Comes Next: Appeal and Stay Risk

The Trump administration can appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. It may simultaneously ask the First Circuit for an emergency stay that would temporarily reinstate the holds while the appeal proceeds.

A stay is harder to obtain here than in some other cases. The ruling rests on three independent legal grounds. To win a stay, the government must show a likelihood of success on the merits: overcoming all three grounds, not just one. That said, the First Circuit could disagree on any one of them, and emergency immigration stays move quickly.

If the First Circuit denies a stay, the government can go directly to the Supreme Court's shadow docket.

Bottom line for practitioners: The policies are void today. Act now. Do not wait for the appeal to resolve.

Action Checklist for EB-1A/O-1 Attorneys

Work through this list for every client from a travel-ban country.

Step 1: Identify affected clients

Check your active caseload for clients who are nationals of countries listed in Proclamations 10949 or 10998. Afghanistan, Iran, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, and Myanmar are among the named countries. Review the full proclamation lists.

Step 2: Categorize by policy impact

Client situation	Policy that applied	What should happen now
Pending I-485 filed before Jan 2026 and not adjudicated	Benefits Hold	USCIS must resume adjudication
EAD expired or stuck pending	Benefits Hold	USCIS must process
Naturalization delayed or oath cancelled	Benefits Hold	Ceremony should be rescheduled; application must be decided
Previously approved asylum, I-485, or EAD reopened for re-review	Re-Review Policy	Re-review vacated; prior approval should stand
EB-1A/EB-2 I-485 where nationality was treated as negative factor	Country-Specific Factors Policy	That factor is vacated; USCIS cannot apply it

Step 3: Check current case status

Log into USCIS online accounts for affected clients. Review receipt notices for any reference to a hold, pause, or re-review. Save every document.

Step 4: Give USCIS a reasonable window

The agency needs time to work through its backlog. Two to four weeks is a reasonable initial window before escalating. Some service centers will be slower than others.

Step 5: Send inquiry or follow-up

If a case remains frozen with no movement after a reasonable period, send a written inquiry through the USCIS Contact Center or Emma. Reference the Dorcas vacatur. Note the specific policy that applied to your client's case.

Step 6: Consider mandamus if the case stays stuck

If USCIS still fails to adjudicate after a reasonable period, two legal tools can compel action:

• A mandamus action under 28 U.S.C. § 1361 asks a federal court to order USCIS to decide the case.
• An APA unreasonable-delay claim under 5 U.S.C. § 706(1) does the same.

Neither tool forces a particular outcome. They force the agency to act. The Dorcas vacatur and declaratory judgment provide strong support for both.

Connection to Other Active USCIS Policy Changes

The Dorcas ruling does not exist in isolation. Three other active USCIS policy changes bear on EB-1A/O-1 practitioners handling clients from travel-ban countries.

The May 2026 AOS discretionary memo (PM-602-0199) expanded USCIS discretion to deny adjustment of status applications even when an applicant is technically eligible. DHS subsequently clarified that high-skilled applicants with "national security or economic benefits" are exempt from mandatory consular processing referrals. See our coverage of the AOS discretionary policy and its EB-1A/O-1 exceptions and the EB-1A/O-1 specific AOS memo.

The PA-2025-16 non-discretionary review memo expanded when USCIS will apply unfavorable discretion to EB-1A approvals. That guidance remains in place; only the country-of-origin negative factor (PA-2025-26) was vacated by Dorcas. See our analysis of PA-2025-16.

The June 2026 Visa Bulletin shows EB-1A retrogression pressure continuing for India and China. That backlog pressure is separate from the benefit freeze and continues unaffected. See our visa bulletin analysis.

For clients on the O-1 to green card path, the roadmap has not fundamentally changed. The benefit freeze had been creating EAD gaps that now should close. See our guide on O-1 to EB-1A green card strategy for how to sequence these filings.

What Attorneys Should Do Now

The Dorcas decision is good news for practitioners with clients from the 39 travel-ban countries. It requires immediate action on two fronts.

First, identify which clients were caught by the four vacated policies and push those cases forward now while the ruling is in effect.

Second, understand what the ruling does not do. The travel ban's entry restrictions remain. Consular visa processing abroad remains paused. Clients outside the United States from these countries face different and harder problems that Dorcas does not solve.

The government will appeal. The outcome of that appeal is uncertain. Attorneys who act now protect clients who have already waited six months too long.

Immigration Copilot helps attorneys track pending adjustment of status cases and identify which clients may be affected by USCIS policy changes. Sign up to manage your EB-1A and O-1 caseload.