Trending 
A United States (US) judge has blocked restrictions enacted by President Donald Trump‘s administration on legal immigration following last year’s shooting of two members of the National Guard by an Afghan immigrant on Friday.
According to AFP, District Judge John McConnell said the restrictions on asylum, work permits, green card and citizenship applications from nationals of 39 African, Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern countries were unlawful.
The restrictions were imposed after the November 26, 2025, shooting in Washington of National Guard members by an Afghan man who immigrated to the United States following the Taliban takeover in Kabul, in which one of the National Guard members was killed in the attack.
The restrictive immigration policies enacted by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) “threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo,” McConnell said.
“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. Over six months later, many of those individuals remain without work, without legal status, and without any meaningful ability to plan for their futures.
USCIS, in imposing the restrictions, was using “pretextual concerns of ‘national security’ that mask anti-immigrant sentiments,” the judge added.
Also, the judge stated that 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.”
“The court concludes that they do not; USCIS’s actions are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious,” McConnell said.
