Obama-Appointed Judge Orders Trump Admin To Restart Processing Asylum Claims
“The Left has been running the same gambit with so-called ‘animus’ claims since 2017. It is sabotage dressed in legal clothing…”
SAT JUN 6, AT 7:50 PM
BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, JUN 06, 2026 – 07:50 PM
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
The Trump administration must restart processing claims of asylum, a federal judge ruled on June 5.
Officials must also resume adjudicating requests for immigration benefits such as work permits from nationals of 39 countries from which President Donald Trump has restricted travel, Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr., based in Rhode Island, said.
This is the same judge AFL exposed for failing to recuse from the Trump spending freeze case – despite previously leading a nonprofit that received $128M in federal funding.
The Department of Homeland Security and its U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) division, which implemented the challenged policies, said they did not agree with the ruling.
“The Left has been running the same gambit with so-called ‘animus’ claims since 2017. It is sabotage dressed in legal clothing,” James Percival, the Department of Homeland Security’s general counsel, told The Epoch Times via email.
“It goes like this: (1) the admin is racist, (2) therefore a policy I don’t like is motivated by race, (3) therefore it is invalid. They have used it on virtually every Trump era Department of Homeland Security policy.”
“These policies were wrong, plain and simple, and caused … profound fear and uncertainty for so many of our friends, neighbors, and coworkers,” Milagro Sique, CEO of Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement.
“Having the judicial process work as intended—by upholding the rule of law—gives us some reassurance that all is not lost and allows those who have been impacted to move forward with their lives in a meaningful way.”