US judge stops Trump’s restrictions on immigration that would have affected 39 countries

A federal judge in the US has stopped Trump’s policies that made it take longer for people from 39 countries to apply for refuge, work permits, and citizenship.

Some immigration rules put in place by President Donald Trump have been thrown out by a US federal judge. The judge said that the rules were illegal because they stopped people from 39 countries from getting decisions on their applications for refuge, work permits, green cards, and citizenship.

In Providence, Rhode Island, Chief US District Judge John McConnell threw out policies put in place by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). He said the policies put people from dozens of African, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries in “indeterminate legal limbo.”

McConnell said that the immigrants had followed the legal steps set out by Congress and USCIS rules but were still “stuck waiting for months on end for benefit requests that USCIS refuses to adjudicate.”

Former President Barack Obama chose the judge. He said the policies were made without legal or regulatory power and were based on “anti-immigrant sentiments that it is forbidden from letting influence its decision-making.”

“USCIS’s hold on adjudications cannot be blamed on anything these people did wrong; it appears to be due to the chance of their birth,” he wrote.

A group of immigrant service groups and labor unions sued in March to challenge the policies. The decision is a win for them. The US Department of Homeland Security is responsible for USCIS.

“This decision upholds a basic principle: the federal government cannot block legal immigration routes or treat people differently because of where they are from,” said Skye Perryman, head of the legal group Democracy Forward, which is representing the claimants.

The Department of Homeland Security didn’t say anything about the choice right away.

The steps were taken by USCIS as part of a larger crackdown on immigration that began after two National Guard members were shot in Washington, DC, in November. The attack is said to have been done by Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan immigrant who has pleaded not guilty.

After what happened, Trump promised on social media to “permanently pause migration †from all third-world countries to allow the US system to fully recover.” He also added 39 more countries to the list of countries where travelers are not allowed to enter or stay for any reason.

Afghanistan, Iran, Haiti, Somalia, Venezuela, and Syria were some of the countries where people were not allowed to travel at all. The government justified the limits on security and background checks.

McConnell said the policies barred people from those countries from applying for immigration benefits and “hung up the lives of countless people just because of where they were born.”

“But the law should be fair to everyone, and it’s clear that USCIS hasn’t ‘followed the law’ or ‘done things the right way,'” he wrote. The agency has violated both the immigration laws and the rules that govern its actions.