- A federal judge blocked USCIS immigration policies targeting travel ban nations, citing potential nationality-based discrimination.
- The ruling halts the freeze on benefit adjudications for people already lawfully present within the United States.
- Advocacy groups report over two million applications frozen despite the government collecting $1 billion in filing fees.
(BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS) — U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick blocked key parts of the Trump administration’s USCIS policies on April 30, 2026, ruling that the agency’s halt on immigration applications from travel ban countries was likely unlawful and discriminatory.
Kobick’s preliminary injunction bars enforcement of the challenged policies against 22 individual plaintiffs who showed immediate harm. The ruling addressed two measures at once: a categorical pause on adjudications for people from designated countries and a policy that treated nationality from those countries as a “significant negative factor.”
Jim Hacking, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said the order marked the first judicial decision to confront both policies together. Kobick ruled that presidential authority under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act covers entry restrictions, but not a pause on benefit adjudications for people already lawfully inside the United States.
The case centers on actions USCIS took after President Trump’s December 16, 2025 Presidential Proclamation 10998, which designated 39 countries as high risk and imposed full or partial travel ban restrictions. Starting in November 2025, USCIS instructed officers to treat nationality from those countries as a “significant negative factor” in green card and work permit cases.
On January 1, 2026, USCIS issued a directive ordering officers to [“Place a hold on all pending benefit applications for aliens listed in Presidential Proclamation 10998. pending a comprehensive review. [and] conduct a comprehensive re-review of approved benefit requests. approved on or after January 20, 2021.”]( That memo became central to the legal challenge in Boston.
USCIS defended the measures publicly in the days before Kobick ruled. A USCIS spokesperson said on April 27, 2026, “USCIS has paused all adjudications for aliens from high-risk countries while USCIS works to ensure that all aliens from these countries are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.”
One day later, USCIS spokesperson Zach Kahler said the agency had imposed tighter screening measures. “USCIS has implemented new security checks to strengthen the vetting and screening of applicants through expanded access to federal criminal databases. Any delay in decision issuance should be brief and resolved shortly. USCIS will always prioritize the safety of the American people.”
Kobick’s ruling cut against that position. She found the policies likely conflicted with the Immigration and Nationality Act’s bar on nationality-based discrimination, a conclusion that reaches beyond a dispute over processing delays and strikes at the legal basis for how the agency handled cases from the listed countries.
The affected countries included Iran, Haiti, Venezuela, Syria and Afghanistan, along with other nations covered by Proclamation 10998. In practice, the challenged USCIS policies touched applications for green cards, work permits, naturalization and related benefits filed by people already living in the country.
A separate federal order had already narrowed the government’s room to apply the freeze. Judge George L. Russell III in Maryland ordered processing for 83 additional plaintiffs on April 27, 2026, leaving two court rulings in the same week curbing enforcement of the administration’s approach.
Advocacy group Project Press Unpause estimated that more than two million applications were frozen under the policies. During that same period, USCIS collected more than $1 billion in filing fees, adding a financial dimension to complaints that the government had stopped adjudicating cases while still taking in payments.
The freeze reached far beyond paperwork. Many applicants, including doctors, engineers and scientists, lost the legal right to work when employment authorization document renewals stopped moving, while others said delays cut off healthcare access and prevented apartment lease renewals because they lacked updated proof of status.
Families also faced longer separations as naturalization and green card cases stalled, and some could not travel abroad because their applications remained unresolved. Those effects helped shape the court’s decision to grant immediate relief to the 22 plaintiffs, even as the broader impact of the order remains under discussion.
Federal agencies had not issued a formal Department of Homeland Security press statement responding to the ruling, but the policy framework remains visible in public government records, including the USCIS memorandum issued on January 1, 2026, the agency’s [alerts and updates page](, and DHS’s [fact sheet on Presidential Proclamation 10998](.
The Boston order now stands as the first ruling to address, in one case, both the “significant negative factor” rule and the broader halt on adjudications tied to the travel ban. For now, enforcement is blocked for 22 plaintiffs in Kobick’s case and 83 additional plaintiffs covered by the Maryland order, while the administration’s effort to tie immigration benefits to nationality faces two federal court setbacks in the same week.
