A.C.R. v. Noem is a federal lawsuit filed in July 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York challenging the Trump administration’s decision to end a 2022 policy that had granted deferred action and work authorization to young immigrants with approved Special Immigrant Juvenile Status petitions stuck in the visa backlog. In November 2025, the court sided largely with the plaintiffs and restored the policy. The government has since re-terminated it through a new memorandum, and an appeal on a related issue is pending before the Second Circuit.
What the Lawsuit Challenges
The case targets USCIS’s June 6, 2025 rescission of a Biden-era policy that had shielded roughly 200,000 young people from deportation while their green card applications sat in a backlog that can run five to ten years or longer.
Special Immigrant Juvenile Status is granted to children a state juvenile court has found were abused, neglected, or abandoned by a parent and cannot safely be returned to their home country. Approval clears them for a green card in principle, but SIJ recipients fall under the EB-4 employment visa category, which is capped at roughly 10,000 to 11,000 visas per year against more than 300,000 SIJ petitions filed since 2013. The 2022 policy, announced March 7 and effective May 6, filled that gap by having USCIS automatically consider deferred action for SIJ recipients waiting on a visa. Grants lasted four years, were renewable, and made recipients eligible for Employment Authorization Documents, Social Security numbers, and other identification.
Under the June 2025 rescission, USCIS stopped granting new deferred action to SIJ youth, stopped accepting new work authorization applications based on it, and barred renewals of existing grants. The policy alert stated that juvenile court findings of abuse or neglect were no longer “sufficiently compelling” to warrant deferred action. Internal records later showed adjudicators had quietly been instructed to stop making deferred action determinations as early as April 7, 2025, before any public announcement.
The administration pointed to a July 2025 USCIS report, Criminality, Gangs, and Program Integrity Concerns in Special Immigrant Juvenile Petitions, which identified 853 known or suspected gang members among more than 300,000 SIJ petitioners filed between fiscal year 2013 and February 2025, along with nearly 19,000 petitioners with criminal arrest records. The report acknowledged its figures were compiled through “manual identification” and were “likely an underrepresentation.” USCIS also cited Executive Order 14161 and an April 4, 2025 memorandum from then-Secretary Kristi Noem directing that deferred action be reserved for “extraordinary and compelling circumstances.”
Advocates estimated the rescission left about 150,000 young people without deportation protection or work authorization, and by extension without the driver’s licenses, bank accounts, health coverage, and school access that flowed from the work permit.
Who Sued and What They Claimed
The complaint was filed July 17, 2025 as case number 1:25-cv-3962. Nine individual plaintiffs are SIJ recipients, led by A.C.R., a high school student who said that without deferred action she could not attend school and faced return to violence and abuse in Guatemala. Two legal services organizations, the Central American Refugee Center (CARECEN-NY) and Centro Legal de La Raza, joined as organizational plaintiffs, arguing the rescission forced them to divert resources to defending clients in removal proceedings. The plaintiffs are represented by the National Immigration Project, Kids in Need of Defense, Public Counsel, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, and Lowenstein Sandler LLP.
The suit brings claims under the Administrative Procedure Act. The plaintiffs argue the rescission was arbitrary and capricious because USCIS failed to consider the reliance interests of affected youth or alternatives to outright termination; that it conflicts with USCIS regulations making people with deferred action eligible for work authorization; that USCIS violated the Accardi doctrine by silently stopping deferred action determinations in April 2025 before formally changing the policy in June; and that the termination bypassed the notice and justification required by the APA.
The complaint proposes three classes: SIJ beneficiaries who would no longer be considered for deferred action, those with existing grants who could no longer renew, and those whose work permit applications would not be processed.
The November 2025 Ruling
On November 19, 2025, U.S. District Judge Eric Komitee stayed the rescission and ordered USCIS to resume deferred action and employment authorization adjudications under the 2022 policy. He found the plaintiffs “likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the policy reversal was unlawful.”
The core of the ruling was reliance. The 2022 policy had expressly acknowledged that SIJ recipients relied on remaining in the United States and being able to work after their petitions were approved. “Neither the 2025 Policy Alert nor the USCIS Internal Memo made any mention of potential reliance interests or alternatives to rescinding SIJS-DA outright,” the court found, which made the rescission likely arbitrary and capricious under Supreme Court precedent.
On the Accardi claim, Judge Komitee noted that the government did not dispute halting deferred action determinations between April and June 2025 without any public announcement, and concluded the plaintiffs were likely to prevail on that theory too. The court also rejected the government’s argument that deferred action decisions were unreviewable prosecutorial discretion, characterizing the SIJ program as “a program for conferring affirmative immigration relief” subject to APA review.
The stay applies to all SIJ beneficiaries nationwide who would have been eligible under the 2022 policy, though the court has not certified a class, finding certification “unnecessary for purposes of granting a stay.” A narrower piece of the order — the bar on deporting plaintiffs during the litigation — covers only the nine named individuals. Judge Komitee also declined to set processing deadlines, acknowledging that USCIS could drag out adjudications as a result.
The January 2026 Clarification and the Second Circuit Appeal
A dispute followed the November order over exactly what standard USCIS had to apply. The pre-rescission USCIS Policy Manual treated SIJ approval as a “strong factor that weighs heavily in favor of granting deferred action.” The plaintiffs asked the court to confirm that standard governed under the stay.
On January 14, 2026, Judge Komitee denied that motion. He ruled the stay required USCIS to apply the pre-rescission standard only for a narrow group: individuals whose SIJ petitions were approved between April 6, 2025, and June 6, 2025. For everyone else, including people approved after June 6, 2025, and those seeking renewals, USCIS could apply a less favorable standard.
The plaintiffs appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on February 3, 2026, arguing that the lower standard is “inconsistent with the court’s order staying the government’s rescission.” The Second Circuit granted expedited briefing with a completion deadline of June 5, 2026. As of mid-2026, no oral argument date has been scheduled and no appellate ruling has issued.
The April 2026 Re-Termination
While the appeal was pending, USCIS shifted approach. On April 10, 2026, the agency issued Policy Memorandum PM-602-0198, terminating the 2022 deferred action policy a second time, effective May 10, 2026. This time USCIS attempted to cure the flaw Judge Komitee had identified by conducting a formal reliance interest analysis, concluding that national security and program integrity concerns outweighed the reliance interests of affected youth. The agency cited its July 2025 criminality report and the fact that the 2022 policy had not required biometric-based background checks.
Under the new memorandum, USCIS no longer automatically considers deferred action for SIJ beneficiaries. Individuals may still request it case by case, but SIJ approval is no longer treated as a particularly strong positive factor. The policy applies only to petitions filed on or after May 10, 2026; earlier filings continue to be adjudicated under the 2022 policy. Existing deferred action grants generally remain valid until their current expiration dates, though USCIS reserved the right to terminate them individually.
Where Things Stand
The November 2025 stay remains in place, so SIJ petitions filed before May 10, 2026 continue to be evaluated under the 2022 framework. The Second Circuit appeal concerns only the scope of that stay and the January 2026 clarification, not the new memorandum. As of mid-2026, the plaintiffs have not filed a separate challenge to the April 2026 policy or sought emergency relief to block it, and no appellate ruling has issued. Whether the re-termination survives its own legal challenge, and whether the Second Circuit’s eventual ruling will bear on the new policy, are open questions.