A federal court has ordered USCIS to stop freezing immigration applications based on where an applicant is from, in a ruling that covers far more people than the agency’s earlier losses on the same issue.
The court order
On August 24, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued an order in Red Eagle Law, L.C., et al. v. Joseph B. Edlow, enjoining two internal USCIS directives known as Policy Memorandum PM-602-0192 and Policy Memorandum PM-602-0194. Those memos had told immigration officers to pause final decisions on pending cases filed by applicants from a list of 39 countries and the Palestinian Authority, starting in December 2025. The court ordered USCIS to adjudicate applications in its normal course going forward.
Why this ruling is different
What sets this ruling apart from earlier wins against the same policy is scope. The court also certified a class covering anyone who is a citizen or native of one of the affected countries and has a pending asylum application or any other benefit application subject to the hold. Earlier rulings against the same memos, in cases such as Doe v. Trump and Varniab v. Edlow, protected only the people who sued. This one covers the entire class, and it requires USCIS to decide the named plaintiffs’ applications within 30 days.
USCIS confirmed the order in an alert four days later, saying the agency strongly disagrees with the ruling but will follow its terms while it considers an appeal. The ruling follows a similar pattern to the Diversity Visa litigation, where a separate federal judge ordered USCIS to resume paused DV-2026 adjustment cases after finding another hold policy likely unlawful.
What the injunction does not do
An injunction is not the same as approval. It removes the blanket freeze and returns affected applications to ordinary processing, but each case still has to be individually adjudicated on its own merits.