US judge invalidates Trump policies targeting immigrants from 39 countries

June 5 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration unlawfully barred applicants from 39 travel‑ban countries from receiving decisions on ​asylum, work permits, green cards and citizenship, a U.S. federal judge ‌ruled on Friday.

Chief U.S. District Judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had adopted a series of unlawful policies targeting people from ​39 African, Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern countries.

His ruling came ​in a lawsuit filed in March by a coalition of immigrant ⁠service organizations and labor unions challenging a suite of policies adopted starting ​in November by USCIS, which is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland ​Security.

Those measures placed a hold on processing immigration benefit applications from people in the 39 countries subject to Trump’s full or partial travel bans, which he has justified on vetting and ​security grounds. Green cards grant foreign nationals permanent resident status.

DHS did not ​immediately respond to a request for comment.

McConnell, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, ‌said ⁠those policies “threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo.”

The judge wrote: “USCIS’s hold on adjudications cannot be attributed to anything that these individuals did wrong; rather, it arises solely by the happenstance of ​their birth.”

He said the ​immigrants at issue ⁠had adhered to the legal processes that Congress had enacted and USCIS had adopted by regulation, yet had been “stuck ​waiting, for months on end, for benefit requests that USCIS ​refuses ⁠to adjudicate.”

“But the rule of law has to apply to everyone equally and, as evident here, USCIS has neither ‘followed the law’ nor ‘done things the right way,'” McConnell ⁠wrote. “Indeed, the ​agency has violated the very immigration laws ​that Congress has charged it with administering, as well as the administrative laws that govern the agency’s ​actions.”