Donald Trump’s bid to make it dramatically more expensive for skilled foreign workers to enter the U.S. suffered a major setback after a federal judge struck down one of his signature immigration policies.
U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin ruled on Monday that Trump’s new $100,000 H-1B fee amounted to an unlawful tax that Congress never authorized.
The visas are widely used by technology companies, universities, hospitals, and other employers seeking highly skilled foreign workers.
Trump had announced the H-1B visa fee last September, raising the cost of obtaining a new visa from roughly $2,000–$5,000 to an eye-watering $100,000.
But in his ruling, Sorokin, who was appointed under Barack Obama, concluded that the administration’s attempt to describe the charge as a penalty did not withstand scrutiny.
“The substance and application of the $100,000 payment reveal that it is a tax, regardless of what the payment is called,” the judge wrote, finding that Trump lacked the authority to impose it unilaterally.
Trump’s decision last year to impose the new fee set off such a panic that some panicked passengers aboard a Dubai-bound Emirates flight in San Francisco demanded to get off the plane, fearing they would not be let back into the country if they left America.
Court filings also show the policy had an immediate chilling effect, with relatively few employers willing to pay the new charge.
And there was a double standard, too: while the administration sought to impose a six-figure barrier on employers bringing in engineers, scientists, and other highly skilled workers, it simultaneously championed the so-called “Gold Card” visa program, which offers wealthy foreigners and corporations a fast-track route into the United States in exchange for a $1 million payment.
Sorokin’s decision is the latest judicial rebuke of Trump’s aggressive efforts to restrict immigration through executive action.
Since returning to office, Trump has pursued a sweeping crackdown that has included tighter visa rules, expanded deportation initiatives, efforts to limit asylum access, and repeated attempts to make both temporary and permanent legal immigration more difficult.
The ruling also lands in the middle of a years-long civil war inside Trump’s own political movement over high-skilled immigration, which exposed a deep divide between Silicon Valley conservatives and nationalist immigration hardliners.
Tech figures including Elon Musk have argued that foreign engineers and scientists are essential to maintaining America’s technological edge, particularly in artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing.
Musk, himself a former visa holder, has repeatedly defended the program as a way to attract top global talent.
But that position has drawn fierce opposition from some of Trump’s most influential allies.
Former White House strategist Steve Bannon, for instance, has described the H-1B system as a mechanism for replacing American workers with cheaper foreign labor, while Fox News host Laura Ingraham has long argued that companies use the visas to suppress wages and bypass U.S. graduates.
Trump even enraged many within his MAGA base during an interview with Ingraham last year when he backed the visa—and suggested it was needed that there were not enough talented workers in the U.S.
“You can’t come in, open a massive computer chip factory for billions and billions of dollars like is being done in Arizona, and think you’re gonna hire people off an unemployment line to run it,” he later told a US-Saudi investment forum, whose guests included billionaires, company executives known to hire foreign workers and Saudi investors.
The president doubled down. “I love my conservative friends and I love MAGA but this is MAGA! And those people are going to teach our people to make computer chips, and in a short period of time our people are gonna be doing great.”
The ruling came after a lawsuit brought by Democratic state attorneys general, who argued the fee was designed to choke off legal immigration and exceeded presidential authority.
However, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told the Daily Beast: “President Trump has clear legal authority to restrict entry of any class of aliens he determines is not in America’s best interests, and that is exactly what he did. The H-1B program has been abused for decades, and President Trump finally took action to fix it.
“A federal judge in Washington already upheld a nearly identical order, and the Administration is confident this order will be reversed on appeal.”
