SIJS Deferred Action Lawsuit: A.C.R. v. Noem Rulings and Memo

The lawsuit challenging the end of SIJS deferred action is A.C.R. v. Noem, filed July 17, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York by nine immigrant youth and two legal services organizations. It attacks the Trump administration’s June 2025 rescission of a 2022 policy that had shielded roughly 200,000 young people with approved Special Immigrant Juvenile Status petitions from deportation while they waited years for green cards. The case has already produced a preliminary stay of the rescission, but subsequent rulings have narrowed who benefits, a new agency memo has reopened the underlying policy fight, and an appeal is pending before the Second Circuit.¹

What the 2022 Policy Did

Special Immigrant Juvenile Status is available to people under 21 whom a state juvenile, family, or probate court has found were abused, neglected, or abandoned by a parent and cannot safely return to their home country.² Approved petitioners cannot get a green card until an EB-4 visa number becomes available, and since 2016 that wait has stretched to roughly five years as of May 2026, with over 100,000 youth stuck in the backlog.³

In May 2022, USCIS began automatically considering deferred action for anyone with an approved SIJS petition who could not yet apply to adjust status.⁴ Deferred action is not a legal immigration status, but it protects the holder from deportation and opens the door to a work permit, a Social Security number, and stable employment.⁵ About 200,000 young people received that protection between 2022 and 2025.³

USCIS formally rescinded that policy on June 6, 2025, citing Executive Order 14161 and stating that state juvenile court findings of abuse or neglect were not “sufficiently compelling” reasons to grant work authorization or protection from deportation.⁶ Existing grants would not be revoked but would not be renewed. Advocacy organizations reported that lost work authorization led to job terminations, loss of health insurance, and interrupted schooling.⁵

What the Lawsuit Claims

The nine individual plaintiffs are identified only by initials. The two organizational plaintiffs are the Central American Refugee Center (CARECEN-NY) and Centro Legal de la Raza, both of which argued the rescission forced them to divert staff time to defending SIJS clients in removal proceedings.¹ The defendants, all sued in their official capacities, are DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, DHS itself, USCIS, USCIS Director Joseph Edlow, and National Benefits Center Director Terri Robinson.⁷ Counsel for the plaintiffs includes the National Immigration Project, Kids in Need of Defense, Public Counsel, Davis Wright Tremaine, and Lowenstein Sandler.⁸

The complaint raises four claims under the Administrative Procedure Act and the Declaratory Judgment Act:

The rescission was arbitrary and capricious because USCIS did not weigh the reliance interests of the roughly 200,000 youth who had built their lives around the 2022 policy, did not consider alternatives to full rescission, and did not address the humanitarian consequences.
The rescission was contrary to regulation. Under 8 C.F.R. § 274a.12(c)(14), individuals with deferred action are eligible for work authorization, so eliminating the program that produced deferred action effectively amended a regulation without rulemaking.
The agency violated the Accardi doctrine by quietly halting approvals starting around April 2025, departing from its own rules before any formal announcement.⁹
The rescission required notice-and-comment rulemaking that USCIS did not undertake.¹⁰

The case was filed as a proposed nationwide class action, seeking to represent SIJS beneficiaries who would no longer be considered for deferred action, those who could no longer renew existing grants, and those whose work permit applications had stalled.¹¹

The November 2025 Stay

On November 19, 2025, Judge Eric Komitee granted a preliminary stay of the rescission under Section 705 of the APA. The court found the plaintiffs likely to succeed on their arbitrary-and-capricious claim, relying on the Supreme Court’s decision in DHS v. Regents of the University of California, which blocked the attempted termination of DACA on similar grounds. USCIS, the court held, had failed to acknowledge the reliance interests generated by the 2022 policy, failed to consider alternatives such as enhanced screening, and failed to address the humanitarian impact on the affected youth.¹²

The court also found likely violations of the notice-and-comment requirement and the Accardi doctrine, pointing to the unannounced halt to adjudications before the formal June rescission. It rejected the government’s argument that the rescission was an unreviewable exercise of prosecutorial discretion, distinguishing the structured, criteria-based SIJS deferred action program from simple non-enforcement decisions.⁹

Relief was narrower than plaintiffs wanted. Citing 8 U.S.C. § 1252(f)(1) and Garland v. Aleman Gonzalez, the court denied class-wide injunctive relief that would have forced new deferred action determinations for all affected youth. Instead, it stayed the rescission itself under the APA, so the 2022 policy remained in effect, and separately enjoined removal of the nine named plaintiffs during the litigation. Class certification was deferred.¹²

USCIS said it “strongly disagrees” with the ruling but acknowledged it was complying by resuming automatic deferred action consideration and accepting renewal requests.¹³

The January 2026 Narrowing and the Appeal

The plaintiffs then asked the court to confirm that the stay required USCIS to follow the pre-rescission Policy Manual, which had told officers to treat SIJS approval as a “particularly strong positive factor that weighs heavily in favor of granting deferred action.” On January 14, 2026, Judge Komitee denied that motion, holding that the Policy Manual is internal guidance that generally lacks legal force.¹⁴

The result is a two-tier system. For individuals whose SIJS petitions were approved between April 7 and June 6, 2025, the window when the agency was quietly departing from its own rules, USCIS must adjudicate deferred action under the more favorable pre-rescission standards. For everyone else, including those approved after June 6, 2025, and those seeking renewals, USCIS may apply a less favorable standard that does not give special weight to SIJS approval.¹⁵

The plaintiffs appealed that order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on February 3, 2026, arguing that subjecting most SIJS beneficiaries to the weaker standard is inconsistent with the stay of the rescission itself.¹¹ The Second Circuit granted expedited briefing with a completion deadline of June 5, 2026. Plaintiffs filed their opening brief on April 17, 2026. As of late April 2026, no oral argument had been scheduled and no ruling had been issued.¹⁶

The April 2026 Memo

While the appeal was pending, USCIS took a second run at ending the policy. Policy Memorandum PM-602-0198, issued April 10, 2026, re-terminates automatic deferred action consideration for SIJS beneficiaries effective May 10, 2026. This time the agency tried to address the procedural problems Judge Komitee had identified: the memo contains a formal reliance interest analysis covering five categories of affected parties, provides a 30-day implementation window, and makes the change prospective. SIJS petitions filed before May 10, 2026, will still be adjudicated under the 2022 policy.¹⁷

The substantive justification draws on a July 2025 USCIS report, Criminality, Gangs, and Program Integrity Concerns in Special Immigrant Juvenile Petitions, which reviewed over 300,000 petitions filed between fiscal year 2013 and February 2025 and identified 853 known or suspected gang members among petitioners. USCIS argued the 2022 policy’s categorical, automatic approach bypassed the individualized, biometrics-based vetting needed to catch such cases.¹⁸

Under the new framework, SIJS approval is no longer treated as a particularly strong factor in deferred action decisions, and anyone filing on or after May 10, 2026, must affirmatively request deferred action rather than receive automatic consideration.³ Existing deferred action grants remain in place until they expire, unless USCIS terminates them earlier through its discretion.

Where Things Stand for Affected Youth

The November 19, 2025, stay of the June 2025 rescission remains in effect at the district court level, so USCIS is required to conduct deferred action adjudications under the 2022 policy for cases within the stay’s scope.¹⁶ At the same time, the April 2026 memo has introduced a new termination policy that the government appears to argue supersedes the earlier rescission. The interaction between the existing stay and the new memo has not been resolved by the court. Class certification is still undecided.

Practically, the situation now turns on filing date. Youth whose SIJS petitions were filed before May 10, 2026, remain covered under the 2022 policy framework for deferred action purposes. Those filing afterward face case-by-case consideration, with no automatic review and no guaranteed pathway to work authorization during a green card wait that currently runs about five years.

Legislation that would remove SIJS green cards from the employment-based visa category and eliminate the backlog, the Protect Vulnerable Immigrant Youth Act, was reintroduced on June 5, 2025, but has not advanced beyond referral to the Senate Judiciary Committee.¹⁹

1
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. A.C.R. v. Noem
2
Immigrant Legal Resource Center. Overview of Seeking Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) Findings in Juvenile Court
3
Gibson Dunn. Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS): Legislative Foundations, Program Overview, and Recent Rollback of Protections
4
Immigrant Legal Resource Center. Deferred Action for SIJs
5
National Immigration Project. Advisory: End of SIJS Deferred Action
6
USCIS. Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) Frequently Asked Questions
7
Kids in Need of Defense. A.C.R. v. Noem Motion for Preliminary Injunction
8
Public Counsel. Federal Court Blocks Unlawful Policy Change, Restores Protections for Tens of Thousands of Abused, Neglected, or Abandoned Immigrant Youth
9
myattorneyusa.com. Developments in Deferred Action for SIJ
10
Justice Action Center. A.C.R. v. Noem (SIJS Deferred Action Policy)
11
Kids in Need of Defense. A.C.R. v. Noem: Seeking to Reinstate the SIJS Deferred Action Policy
12
myattorneyusa.com. A.C.R. v. Noem Order
13
USCIS. Special Immigrant Juveniles
14
A.C.R. v. Noem. Order Denying Motion for Reconsideration
15
National Immigration Project. A.C.R. v. Noem Updated Guidance
16
National Immigration Project. A.C.R. v. Noem Litigation Page
17
USCIS. PM-602-0198: SIJ Deferred Action
18
USCIS. USCIS Report Uncovers Significant Abuses in the Special Immigrant Juvenile Program
19
Congress.gov. S.1965 – Protect Vulnerable Immigrant Youth Act