A federal court has vacated the USCIS policies that paused adjudication of immigration benefits for nationals of the travel-ban countries, and USCIS has publicly acknowledged that those policies are no longer in effect. So far, however, the agency’s acknowledgment has not been matched by any visible change in how quickly affected cases are actually moving. This post explains the gap — and what employers and their affected employees can do about it.
What Happened, Briefly
On June 5, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, in Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. USCIS, vacated four USCIS policies — the Global Asylum Hold, Benefits Hold, Comprehensive Re-Review, and Country-Specific Factors policies — as unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act. The court entered final judgment on June 11, and USCIS has since acknowledged that the underlying issuances (PM-602-0192, PM-602-0194, and PA-2025-26) should be treated as though they are not in effect, agency-wide. The government has appealed to the First Circuit; absent a stay, USCIS remains obligated to comply in the meantime. (Several firms have published detailed procedural recaps, so we will not repeat the blow-by-blow here.)