A Boston federal judge blocked a USCIS policy marking travel-ban country nationals as a negative factor in green-card, asylum, and naturalization cases, citing the INA's anti-discrimination bar.
U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick issued a preliminary injunction on May 6, 2026, barring U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services from treating an applicant's nationality, specifically citizenship in a country covered by the U.S. travel ban, as a "significant negative factor" in adjudicating immigration benefits [1]. The policy had applied across asylum claims, green-card petitions, work permits, and naturalization applications [1]. The order halts enforcement while litigation proceeds.
The ruling emerged from a challenge filed in the District of Massachusetts in Boston [1]. Judge Kobick, a federal district judge, found that plaintiffs had demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which bars nationality-based discrimination in visa and benefit adjudications [1]. The Department of Homeland Security and USCIS, the two named federal respondents, had defended the policy as a lawful exercise of executive discretion in screening applicants from countries the administration has designated as posing elevated security concerns [1].
The substantive core of the ruling turns on whether the INA's anti-discrimination provision constrains the executive's ability to impose categorical, nationality-based weights in individual benefit decisions, even when an underlying travel ban itself has survived constitutional review [1]. That distinction, between a facially valid entry restriction and a scoring criterion embedded in routine adjudications, is the fault line the court exploited. If the policy had remained in effect, officers across all USCIS benefit categories would have continued to register nationality as an adverse input, compounding the travel ban's practical reach well beyond port-of-entry decisions [1].
The injunction does not vacate the travel ban itself and does not bar USCIS from considering country-specific information where independently supported by the record in a given case [1]. DHS retains the ability to seek a stay pending appeal before the First Circuit, a likely next step given the administration's pattern of challenging adverse immigration rulings through emergency appellate motions [1]. Briefing schedules on the merits have not yet been publicly reported. The case represents one of a growing number of federal court orders placing procedural or substantive limits on immigration enforcement tools deployed since January 2025 [1].