The Trump administration said on Friday that it would comply with a court order to restart processing asylum and other immigration applications filed by a broad swath of people who had been left in legal limbo for months.
The move comes after a federal judge in Rhode Island last week struck down a suite of policies imposed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a major blow to the administration’s expanding efforts to restrict legal immigration. The policies included a global hold on asylum applications filed with the agency and a freeze on immigration applications filed by people from 39 countries, largely in Africa and the Middle East, that are subject to President Trump’s travel ban.
More than a million applications had ground to a halt as a result, preventing many people from obtaining green cards, citizenship and other immigration benefits. The halt also disrupted people’s ability to legally work and left them waiting indefinitely for decisions on their applications.
In a court filing on Friday, Angelica Alfonso-Royals, the deputy director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the agency instructed employees to treat the policies “as if they are no longer in effect.” The agency also said in a memo posted on its website that it “strongly disagrees with the court’s order” but that it would “follow its terms pending possible further judicial review.”
As of Friday evening, it was unclear whether the agency had restarted making immigration application decisions. Also on Friday, the administration filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit seeking to pause the decision.
The response came after Judge John J. McConnell Jr. rebuked the Trump administration for failing to immediately comply with the order he issued last week.
The Trump administration argued in a filing on Tuesday that the initial order by Judge McConnell, an Obama appointee, was preliminary and therefore had not “become effective,” indicating that the department had yet to resume making application decisions.
In response, Judge McConnell quickly entered his judgment on Thursday, ordering the government in blunt terms not to stall any further.
“There is no excuse this time,” he wrote. “The government has an obligation to immediately comply with this order.”
Judge McConnell gave the Trump administration until Friday evening to file an update “advising the court as to what specific steps it has taken to comply.”
Democracy Forward, the legal organization representing the assorted unions and immigration aid groups, had accused the government of playing procedural games to deliberately dodge last week’s court order.
“The Trump-Vance administration’s cruel immigration policies have been about chaos, confusion and inefficiency, and we are proud to challenge these unlawful measures and to have secured a court order blocking the policies,” Skye Perryman, the organization’s president, said in a statement. “The federal government cannot shut down lawful immigration pathways or discriminate against people based on where they come from.”
The policies at the center of the case were issued in November after the authorities said an Afghan national had shot two National Guard members in Washington. The man, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, has pleaded not guilty.
In his searing 135-page opinion last week, Judge McConnell wrote that the policies effectively made it impossible for many people to remain in the country and that they were improperly fueled by “anti-immigration sentiments.”
