Travel Ban Lawsuit Update: Dorcas, CLINIC, and Chikumba Cases

The lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s 2025–2026 travel ban and related visa and benefits freezes are moving on separate tracks, and the latest travel ban lawsuit update is this: on June 5, 2026, a federal judge in Rhode Island struck down USCIS’s freeze on immigration benefits for nationals of 39 countries, the government appealed one week later, and two other cases targeting the State Department’s visa freezes remain undecided.¹²

What the Lawsuits Are Challenging

Three distinct federal policies are being contested, and keeping them separate is the key to following the litigation.

The first is Presidential Proclamation 10998, signed December 16, 2025, and effective January 1, 2026, which placed 39 countries on full or partial entry suspension after an Afghan national shot two National Guard members in Washington, D.C.³ It expanded the original 19-country ban from Proclamation 10949.

The second is USCIS policy memorandum PM-602-0194, issued January 1, 2026, which froze processing of pending work permits, green cards, and citizenship petitions for nationals of those 39 countries and ordered retroactive re-review of benefits approved since January 20, 2021.⁴

The third is a State Department action on January 21, 2026, pausing immigrant visa issuance for nationals of 75 countries on public-charge grounds — a wider list than the travel ban that includes countries like Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Russia.⁵ Nonimmigrant visas were not affected, and previously issued visas were not revoked.⁶

Dorcas v. USCIS and the Rhode Island Ruling

The only case so far to produce a substantive decision is Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. USCIS (Case No. 26-cv-00132-JJM-PAS), filed March 5, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island.⁷ The plaintiffs are a coalition of immigrant services organizations and two labor unions, SEIU and the UAW, represented by Democracy Forward, the Lawyers’ Committee for Rhode Island, RAICES, Muslim Advocates, and the South Asian American Justice Collaborative.⁸ The suit targeted four USCIS actions: the adjudication hold on benefits applications, the global asylum hold, the retroactive re-review of approvals since January 2021, and the “country-specific factors” policy telling officers to treat nationality as a negative factor.

On June 5, 2026, Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. issued a 135-page ruling declaring all four policies unlawful and vacating them nationwide.¹ The decision rested on three findings.

On statutory authority, Judge McConnell held that federal law requires USCIS to adjudicate applications “in regular order,” and that INA §212(f) gives the President power over the entry of noncitizens but does not authorize a domestic agency to halt benefit adjudications or impose nationality-based negative presumptions.⁹ On rationality, the court found the policies arbitrary and capricious, noting the government had failed to explain why benefits for nationals of countries as different as Cuba, Nigeria, and Venezuela should be suspended based on the actions of a single Afghan national.¹ On motive, the court found evidence of unlawful animus; Judge McConnell wrote that it was “impossible to ignore the backdrop” of anti-immigrant statements by President Trump and former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and concluded the policies were rooted in “unlawful bigotry against immigrants from certain countries.”¹⁰

The ruling took effect immediately. USCIS was ordered to resume adjudicating the hundreds of thousands of stalled applications and to reschedule canceled naturalization ceremonies.¹⁰ The court entered a declaratory judgment under the Administrative Procedure Act rather than a permanent injunction, finding that vacating the policies gave the plaintiffs complete relief. One boundary matters here: Judge McConnell expressly stated his ruling does not reach the State Department’s 75-country immigrant visa pause, which is being litigated separately.⁹

The Government’s Appeal to the First Circuit

On June 12, 2026, the government filed a notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (Case No. 26-1703).² The appellants include USCIS Director Joseph Edlow, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, USCIS, and DHS. As of mid-June 2026, the government had not filed a motion for an emergency stay of Judge McConnell’s order, although it could still seek one from the First Circuit or, if denied, from the Supreme Court.¹ Until a stay is granted, USCIS is required to process the previously frozen applications.

CLINIC v. Rubio and the 75-Country Visa Freeze

CLINIC v. Rubio (Case No. 1:26-cv-00858) was filed February 2, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. It challenges the State Department’s 75-country immigrant visa freeze. The lead plaintiffs are the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC) and African Communities Together, joined by individual plaintiffs including working professionals from Colombia and U.S. citizens trying to bring family members from Ghana, Ethiopia, Jamaica, and Guatemala.¹¹ The defendants are the Department of State and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The plaintiffs’ legal team includes the National Immigration Law Center, Democracy Forward, The Legal Aid Society of New York, the Western Center on Law and Poverty, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Colombo and Hurd. The complaint argues the blanket freeze violates the APA for lack of notice-and-comment rulemaking, violates the INA by imposing nationality-based restrictions Congress never authorized, exceeds executive authority, and discriminates on the basis of race and national origin in violation of the Fifth Amendment.¹² The public-charge rationale, they say, is a pretext for rewriting visa processing rules wholesale.¹¹

As of April 2026, the case is pending on cross-motions for partial summary judgment. The plaintiffs are asking the court to declare the visa freeze unlawful, vacate it permanently, and order the government back to individualized visa processing.¹¹ The 75-country freeze remains in effect while the case is decided.

Chikumba v. Department of State

A third case, Chikumba v. Department of State (No. 1:26-cv-00332), was filed February 4, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and assigned to Judge Amy Berman Jackson.¹³ It challenges the State Department’s parallel halt on visa adjudications for nationals of the 39 travel-ban countries. The plaintiffs argue that even if the President has authority under INA §212(f) to suspend entry, that power does not let the Department stop processing visa applications Congress mandated it adjudicate.¹⁴

As of mid-June 2026, the docket shows only procedural filings; no substantive rulings have been issued.¹³

Related Cases Running Alongside

Several other actions touch the same policies without being central to them. The International Refugee Assistance Project filed a FOIA lawsuit in the Southern District of New York on October 28, 2025, seeking internal records from State, DHS, USCIS, and CBP on how the travel ban is being implemented. The case remains open with no records released as of mid-2026.¹⁵

In Afghan and Iraqi Allies v. Rubio, a district court has ordered notice regarding the travel ban’s effect on Afghan Special Immigrant Visa applicants, according to a June 2026 update from CLINIC.¹⁶ A separate Massachusetts case, Doe v. Trump (25-cv-13946, D. Mass.), was filed on behalf of roughly 200 individuals challenging the adjudication holds and changes to discretionary adjudication standards.¹⁷

The Core Legal Question

The cases turn on how far the President’s entry-suspension power actually reaches. Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, in force since 1952, lets the President “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens” whose entry is deemed “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” In Trump v. Hawaii (2018), the Supreme Court upheld an earlier travel ban 5–4, describing §212(f) as a “comprehensive delegation” of power that “exudes deference to the President.”¹⁸

The 2026 plaintiffs are pressing a narrower question. They argue §212(f) authorizes restrictions on entry at the border, not blanket freezes on visa adjudications or domestic benefits processing that Congress separately required agencies to perform.¹⁴ They also contend that using nationality as a blanket disqualifier, instead of evaluating applicants individually as the INA requires, conflicts with federal anti-discrimination provisions.¹² Judge McConnell adopted that reasoning in Dorcas, drawing a sharp line between the President’s power to bar people at the border and the authority of USCIS to refuse to process applications already in the pipeline.⁹

Where Things Stand for Affected Applicants

Three threads are worth watching over the next several weeks. Judge McConnell’s order requires USCIS to resume processing benefits applications for nationals of the 39 travel-ban countries, but a stay from the First Circuit or the Supreme Court could pause that direction. The State Department’s 75-country immigrant visa freeze stays in place pending a ruling in CLINIC v. Rubio, and the parallel 39-country visa halt remains unresolved in Chikumba.¹¹¹³ Proclamation 10998’s 39-country list is also subject to a 180-day review cycle expected around mid-to-late June 2026, in which countries may be added, removed, or reclassified independent of any court ruling.¹⁹

1
American Immigration Council. Court Blocks USCIS Immigration Pause for 39 Countries
2
CourtListener. Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. USCIS
3
The White House. Restricting and Limiting the Entry of Foreign Nationals
4
USCIS. PM-602-0194
5
U.S. Department of State. Immigrant Visa Processing Updates for Nationalities at High Risk of Public Benefits Usage
6
Yale Office of International Students and Scholars. Suspension of Immigrant Visa Processing for 75 Countries
7
Democracy Forward. Challenging Unlawful Policies Targeting Immigrants Based on Country of Origin
8
Democracy Forward. Broad Coalition Files Lawsuit to Block Trump-Vance Administration Policies
9
Cyrus Mehta Blog. Dorcas v. USCIS — Federal Court Reaffirms That USCIS Must Adjudicate
10
Courthouse News Service. Judge Blocks Trump’s Sweeping Freeze on Immigration Benefits
11
National Immigration Law Center. CLINIC v. Rubio
12
Center for Constitutional Rights. Questions and Answers About the 75 Country Visa Ban Lawsuit
13
CourtListener. Chikumba v. U.S. Department of State
14
Eigen Law. Lawsuit Challenges DOS Visa Freeze for 39 Travel Ban Countries
15
International Refugee Assistance Project. FOIA — Releasing Records on the Travel Ban
16
CLINIC. Topline Immigration Policy Updates
17
Fragomen. USCIS Expands and Clarifies Adjudication Policies
18
Congressional Research Service. Immigration: Presidential Authority to Restrict the Entry of Aliens
19
Mandamus Lawyers. 39-Country Travel Ban vs. 75-Country Visa Freeze Comparison