A federal judge blasted Donald Trump’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for not complying with his order to resume immigration processing that had been suspended after two National Guard members were shot last year.
The Trump administration stopped processing immigration benefits and froze asylum requests for applicants from 39 countries in response to the November shooting, which left one of the troops dead and the other injured.
Rhode Island District Judge John McConnell ruled last week the policy was unlawful and arbitrary, and had left countless people “without work, without legal status, and without any meaningful ability to plan for their futures” based solely on their countries of birth.
After USCIS failed to resume processing applications this week, McConnell, an Obama appointee, wrote an exasperated order instructing the government to comply with his ruling.
“It should almost go without saying—but the Court will say it anyway… court orders vacating and setting aside agency policies have immediate effect once they are issued,” he wrote. “There is no excuse this time.”
The ruling came in response to a request from the plaintiffs—a coalition of labor unions and immigrant right groups—to force the administration to follow last week’s decision.
“USCIS’s Challenged Policies are no longer in effect,” McConnell wrote.
“To be perfectly clear,” that means they are are “vacated,” “set aside,” “canceled,” “annulled,” “revoked,” and “voided,” he added, citing the dictionary.
The decision requires USCIS to begin processing hundreds of thousands of suspended applications, according to the American Immigration Council.
Government lawyers told The Washington Post they planned to appeal the ruling and seek a stay to block McConnell’s order while the appeals process plays out.
The Daily Beast has also reached out to the USCIS for comment.
On Nov. 26, West Virginia National Guard members Sarah Beckstrom and Andrew Wolfe—who had been deployed to Washington, D.C., as part of Trump’s federal takeover—were ambushed two blocks from the White House.
Beckstrom, 20, died from her injuries the next day, while Wolfe, now 25, suffered serious injuries but survived.
The suspect in the case, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was an Afghan special forces soldier with a CIA-backed unit before he entered the U.S. in 2022 and was granted asylum by the Trump administration in March 2025.
The president nevertheless used the shooting as an excuse to attack immigrants, accuse the Biden administration of failing to vet asylum seekers, and announce his plans to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries” to “allow the U.S. system to fully recover” from a supposed influx of “illegal and disruptive populations.”
“Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post in the days following the shooting. “Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — You won’t be here for long!”
