Federal Judge Orders USCIS to Resume Frozen Green-Card Processing

On July 6, 2026, U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley granted a preliminary injunction requiring U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Department of Homeland Security to resume processing pending immigration-benefit applications for 25 foreign nationals whose cases had been frozen. The challenged policies indefinitely paused adjudication of applications from nationals of countries covered by the administration's travel restrictions and treated nationality as a "significant and negative factor." Plaintiffs included applicants from Burma, Canada, Iran, Nigeria, Syria, Tanzania, and Venezuela. The order directs the agencies to resume processing Form I-485 and I-131 applications and to decide the plaintiffs' pending I-765 work-authorization requests within 30 days.

The ruling adds to a series of court decisions questioning whether the administration may impose broad, nationality-based freezes on immigration benefits for people already lawfully present in the United States. Marbley wrote that national security "cannot be a talisman used to ward off inconvenient claims," and found the government had not explained how delaying decisions for people already in the country served any safety interest.

The injunction is preliminary and applies to the named plaintiffs; the government was expected to appeal, and the court ordered officials to report within 30 days on their compliance. A related Rhode Island ruling the prior month struck down several similar USCIS policies.