(RHODE ISLAND) – A federal judge ruled that USCIS cannot continue four policies that halted final decisions on immigration benefits for people from 39 countries and territories, ordering an immediate restart of adjudications across the United States.

Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. issued the June 5, 2026 order in Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. USCIS, No. 1:26-cv-00132, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island. The ruling vacated the policies, rather than pausing them for a limited group of plaintiffs, which gives the decision nationwide effect.

That means U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) must resume work on pending cases that had been frozen under what became known as the USCIS Benefits Hold and related screening measures. The affected benefit types included Form I-485, Form I-765, Form N-400, and Form I-589, along with asylum and withholding cases.

McConnell found that USCIS lacked authority under the Administrative Procedure Act to impose the holds and re-review system in the form adopted in late 2025 and early 2026. In the opinion, he described the harm as severe, writing that immigrants were pushed into legal limbo based on nationality and birth circumstances.

Four internal USCIS policies fell in the order. They were the Benefits Hold Policy, the Global Asylum Hold Policy, the Comprehensive Re-Review Policy, and the Country-Specific Factors Policy.

The Benefits Hold Policy imposed an indefinite freeze on final decisions for many benefit requests, including adjustment of status, employment authorization, and naturalization. The Global Asylum Hold Policy stopped adjudication of all I-589 asylum and withholding applications, not just cases tied to the listed countries.

The Comprehensive Re-Review Policy required USCIS officers to revisit previously approved requests for people from the designated countries who entered the United States on or after January 20, 2021. The Country-Specific Factors Policy directed officers to treat nationality from those countries as a significant negative factor in discretionary decisions.

The policies covered roughly 39 Countries and territories identified as high-risk under Presidential Proclamations 10949 and 10998. USCIS divided them into 19 Full Restriction Countries and 20 Partial Restriction Countries.

The full restriction list included Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Burma, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, along with holders of Palestinian Authority travel documents. The partial restriction list included Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Dominica, Gabon, The Gambia, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

DHS and USCIS put the policies in place after a shooting in Washington, D.C., in late 2025 involving an Afghan national. Administration officials framed the measures as a response to screening concerns. USCIS Director Joseph Edlow said at the time that asylum claims would not be processed until every applicant was vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.

Shortly before the ruling, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on June 2, 2026 that DHS would evaluate whether adverse rulings were politically motivated. After the decision, DHS General Counsel James Percival defended the administration’s legal position in a June 6, 2026 statement.

McConnell’s order turned on administrative law, not on rhetoric from either side. The opinion said USCIS had not shown statutory authority to impose across-the-board freezes and nationality-based weighting rules through internal policy memoranda. That APA finding is the core legal reason the policies were set aside.

The reach is large. Court filings and public estimates tied the holds and re-review measures to over 2 million applications, spanning work permits, green card cases, naturalization filings, asylum matters, and other requests that could not receive final action while the policies remained in place.

Because the court issued a vacatur, the ruling applies across the country rather than only to named plaintiffs in Rhode Island. USCIS is required to restart adjudications immediately, and PM-602-0194, dated January 1, 2026, is now vacated.

If a pending case was caught in the hold, applicants may want to monitor case status through USCIS systems, watch response deadlines, and preserve copies of prior notices. Resumed processing may bring requests for evidence, interview scheduling, or final decisions on timelines that differ by form type and field office.

Official records for the case and the vacated policy remain available through the federal docket and USCIS. The court docket is posted by the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island. USCIS posted the now-vacated memorandum at [PM-602-0194](https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/memos/PM-602-0194.pdf), and the agency’s public notice appears in the [USCIS Newsroom](https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/alerts/update-on-uscis-strengthened-screening-and-vetting).

This article discusses a legal ruling affecting immigration benefits and may influence readers with pending cases.

This information is current as of the court decision cited and is not a substitute for legal advice.

Consult an qualified immigration attorney for guidance on individual circumstances.