Federal judge rejects bid to dismiss immigration suit against Trump and USCIS News
Federal judge rejects bid to dismiss immigration suit against Trump and USCIS

The US District Court for the Western District of Washington [official website] on Wednesday denied in part and granted in part a motion to dismiss [order, PDF] a class-action suit filed against President Donald Trump [official profile] and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) [official website]. The suit was filed against the Controlled Application Review and Resolution Program (CARRP) [USCIS summary] and claims that the USCIS secretly and unlawfully targets immigration applicants who are Muslim or from certain Muslim-majority countries. Judge Richard Jones certified anyone who had applied for naturalization and been subject to CARRP or a successor “extreme vetting” program as a class. The order also certified an “adjustment class” for applicants seeking an adjustment to their citizenship status. However, the order dismissed with prejudice a due process claim for the adjustment class.

Cases concerning issues of immigration from predominantly Muslim countries continue to be processed in the Federal Judiciary. On Thursday the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan [official website] temporarily blocked [JURIST report] the deportation of over 100 Iraq nationals, arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) [official website] agents, for approximately two weeks, during which time the court will decide whether it has jurisdiction in the matter. Last week the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] ruled against [JURIST report; case materials] the majority of Trump’s revised executive order limiting travel from six Muslim-majority countries. That ruling affirmed [JURIST report] the majority of a district court injunction in March that blocked the order from being enforced. In May, a federal district court in Washington granted a temporary restraining order [JURIST report] to allow legal aid groups to continue to provide certain kinds of assistance to undocumented immigrants. Five days prior a Michigan federal district court ordered [JURIST report] the Trump administration to disclose the draft of the so-called “Muslim ban” executive order. In March California Attorney General Xavier Becerra [official website] announced that his state would be joining Washington and Minnesota in their lawsuit against Trump’s revised executive order [JURIST report] banning citizens from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the US.

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