The Daily Fuckup

A federal judge in Rhode Island threw out four USCIS policies on June 5 that had slowed or halted adjudication and review for some applicants tied to 39 countries in the administration’s travel-ban framework. Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. vacated the Global Asylum Hold, Benefits Hold, Comprehensive Re-Review, and Country-Specific Factors policies in a memorandum and order, finding the agency had gone beyond what the law permits. The court’s order appears on the Rhode Island district court’s opinions list for June 5 and the case docket identifies the matter as Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island et al. v. USCIS. ([ecf.rid.uscourts.gov](https://ecf.rid.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/Opinions.pl))

The ruling targeted USCIS’s own processing rules, not the underlying travel bans themselves. In practical terms, the vacated memoranda affected how the agency handled final decisions and other adjudication steps for applications including asylum, work permits, green cards, and naturalization-related cases. The court said USCIS could not build a nationality-based processing system on its own without the kind of lawful authority and explanation federal agencies are required to provide. ([ecf.rid.uscourts.gov](https://ecf.rid.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/Opinions.pl))

That distinction matters. The order strips away the four USCIS memoranda, but it does not invalidate the travel-ban framework or rewrite the immigration restrictions themselves. The case instead deals with how the agency processed benefits and adjudications inside its own system, and the immediate legal effect is that those four policies were vacated on June 5, 2026. ([ecf.rid.uscourts.gov](https://ecf.rid.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/Opinions.pl))

For applicants, the stakes were concrete: a delayed or withheld immigration decision can keep someone from working, slow a green-card case, or leave a citizenship application stuck in limbo. McConnell’s order rejected the idea that country of origin alone could justify a standing delay or extra screening regime for these applications. ([ecf.rid.uscourts.gov](https://ecf.rid.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/Opinions.pl))