A federal judge in Columbus has thrown a legal lifeline to two dozen immigrants, granting a preliminary injunction that stops U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services from using internal policy memos to stall decisions on their work permits, green cards, and other immigration benefits. For now, the order shields 25 named plaintiffs while their challenge to the agency's handling of their cases plays out in federal court.
According to The Columbus Dispatch, U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley framed the dispute as a basic question of authority: whether USCIS could legally put immigration benefit applications on ice and treat nationality as a strike against applicants. He rejected the government's argument that invoking national security placed the policies beyond a judge's reach, writing that national security cannot be used to ward off judicial review, as reported by The Dispatch.
Court filings show the lawsuit was filed in April by 25 immigrants who say they were living in the United States lawfully when USCIS abruptly put their pending applications on hold. The plaintiffs come from Burma, Canada, Iran, Nigeria, Syria, Tanzania, and Venezuela, according to the court docket. Their complaint and later motions describe fallout ranging from lost jobs to stalled family-based petitions, and they asked the court for quick relief so their individual cases would be processed instead of frozen.
The Columbus order follows a June 5 ruling out of Rhode Island that went much further, wiping out four USCIS memoranda that had operated as a nationwide hold on certain adjudications. In that case, known as Dorcas, the court directed the agency to restart processing for many affected applicants. The contested memoranda, issued in late 2025 and early 2026, instructed officers to pause or re-review some asylum claims and to give heavy weight to country of origin in particular discretionary decisions, according to the Rhode Island docket. Court documents there lay out the full scope of the challenged policies.
Marbley's ruling is more tightly focused. His injunction blocks use of the contested policies only for the 25 Ohio plaintiffs while the lawsuit continues, and the federal government can still ask an appeals court for a stay that would temporarily put his order on hold. Immigration trackers and legal blogs point out that district judges around the country are issuing a patchwork of different remedies in similar challenges, so what happens to other applicants may depend on how appeals shake out and whether USCIS revises or withdraws the memos. VisaVerge and practitioners are busy mapping the conflicting orders and their impact on real-world case processing.
Legal implications
At the core of these fights is a pair of intertwined questions: whether USCIS stepped beyond its statutory authority when it issued the memoranda, and whether labeling policies as national-security measures can shield them from scrutiny under the Administrative Procedure Act. In Rhode Island, Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr.'s Dorcas decision concluded that the memos were unlawful and vacated them on a nationwide basis. Marbley's Columbus order, by contrast, offers immediate, plaintiff-specific relief and signals that courts are reluctant to accept a blanket national-security shield for agency actions, according to the court filings. The split in remedies sets the stage for fast-tracked appeals over both procedure and how much discretion immigration officials really have.
What happens next
The federal government can now seek an emergency stay from an appellate court. If that request is denied, USCIS may have to move forward on the 25 plaintiffs' files, though outcomes can still differ by district as related cases proceed. Separately, the State Department's January guidance that paused immigrant visa issuance for nationals of many countries is still in place for consular processing, so movement on domestic applications does not automatically reopen the consular pipeline. Travel.State.Gov details which consular posts remain.
Immigrant advocates have welcomed Marbley's injunction as a meaningful, if limited, check on agency power and say the next step is pressing USCIS for concrete action to reduce backlogs and issue long-delayed authorizations. Local and national groups involved in similar lawsuits elsewhere say the growing stack of rulings is a reminder that applicants and their lawyers may need to push hard, whether through litigation or dogged case follow-up, to get decisions at all, according to coverage of the broader court battles. Hoodline's reaction after the Rhode Island decision captured some of that wider response.
