“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,” the judge said.
“Over six months later, many of those individuals remain without work, without legal status, and without any meaningful ability to plan for their futures,” McConnell said.
USCIS, in imposing the restrictions, was using “pretextual concerns of ‘national security’ that mask anti-immigrant sentiments,” he said.
The judge, an appointee of Democratic president Barack Obama, said it was not his role to rule on “the wisdom of the government’s policy choices” but to determine whether they “comport with the law.”