On June 5th, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island ruled that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) pause on adjudicating immigration benefits for individuals from 38 countries listed in the Trump administration’s travel ban is unlawful. In his ruling, Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. stated that USCIS exceeded its authority, failed to adequately explain the shift in policy and used pretextual national security concerns to justify its actions. Specifically, he stated that USCIS’s brief explanation, which vaguely prioritized national security concerns over the burden of processing delays for individuals with pending work permit, green card and citizenship requests, was insufficient.
Judge McConnell cited the administration’s attempt to invoke INA § 1182(f), which allows the President to suspend the entry of certain aliens whose presence in the U.S. may be detrimental to national interests. He stated that while this statute provides authority to restrict the entry of noncitizens, it does not permit the federal government to halt the adjudication of immigration benefits for those already present in the U.S. The ruling also declared other recent policies unlawful, including a hold on all pending asylum applications for individuals from travel- ban countries, as well as USCIS efforts to re-review and weigh country-specific factors to already-approved immigration benefit requests. Judge McConnell said that when each of these policies were implemented, USCIS deviated from required rulemaking procedures.
Note that while the processing of immigration benefits for individuals who are from the affected travel ban countries and are presently in the U.S. will continue, the actual travel bans remain in place. Travel bans initially went into effect on June 4, 2025 and were expanded on December 16, 2025. Below is a list of the affected countries and their varying degrees of travel restrictions:
Full Ban:
Partial Ban (B-1, B-2. B-1/B-2, F, M, J Non-Immigrant Visas):
The December 2025 expansion did not include an exception for individuals who qualify as immediate relatives. This means that while submissions[PL1.1] of Form I-130, Petition for Alien Relative filed on behalf of a spouse, sibling or child residing in one of the affected countries will likely be adjudicated, the immediate relative beneficiary will not be able to enter the U.S. on an immigrant visa until there is a revision to the travel ban.
The federal government may attempt to challenge this decision by filing an appeal. In the interim, while individuals from each of the affected countries who are presently in the U.S. and who have pending non-immigrant and family-based immigrant petitions should expect some movement on their cases, backlogs are likely to continue to delay the rendering of case decisions. Individuals from the countries subject to a full travel ban continue to be advised to not attempt entry into the U.S. until the travel bans are lifted.
Additional Assistance
For more information, please contact a member of our Immigration Practice Team or the Phillips Lytle attorney with whom you have a relationship.
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