For thousands of families from Nigeria and 38 other countries, hope has returned after months of uncertainty. Chief Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. of the US District Court in Rhode Island has ordered immigration authorities to restart processing applications that had been put on hold by Trump-era policies. This decision means that countless people seeking asylum, work permits, green cards, and citizenship may finally see movement on their long-stalled cases.
Judge McConnell said USCIS broke the law by putting broad holds on applicants from these countries, pointing out that the agency did not have the legal power to stop processing their cases. “This hold on adjudications cannot be attributed to anything these individuals did wrong; rather, it arises solely by the happenstance of their birth,” he wrote. He criticised USCIS for making immigrants wait for months even though they followed all legal requirements, and said the agency had not followed the laws it was supposed to enforce.
The case was brought in March 2026 by labour unions and immigrant rights groups, who argued that the policies—introduced after a November 2025 shooting in Washington, D.C.—were discriminatory and punitive. The 135-page ruling struck down four major policies: a global asylum freeze; a benefits hold on work permits, green cards, and naturalisations; a re-review mandate for already-approved cases; and a nationality-based risk designation.
The decision represents a significant legal setback for the Trump Administration’s broader effort to extend travel restrictions into domestic immigration processing. It also underscores the deep partisan divide over immigration policy, as the ruling coincided with a narrow 52–47 Senate vote to extend funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and border patrol operations for three more years.
Nigeria was among the African countries affected by the partial travel ban, alongside Angola, Benin, Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Gambia, Malawi, Mauritania, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Other African nations, such as Burkina Faso, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Libya, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan, were subject to the full ban.
The ruling effectively ends USCIS’s asylum processing hold, though advocates caution that the backlog of cases may delay relief for many applicants. For Nigerians and others who had been caught in the freeze, the decision opens the door to long-awaited progress on their immigration claims.