A favorable ruling in another court does not automatically apply to your own case.
The Gap Between Court Rulings and Implementation
This week, a federal court in Ohio ordered USCIS to review the green card applications of 15 immigrants from Myanmar, Canada, Iran, Nigeria, Syria, Tanzania, and Venezuela, with a 30-day deadline. This is just one of many similar lawsuits unfolding across the United States, most centered on the same question: whether a person's country of origin can legally justify indefinitely suspending their immigration case.
Three weeks earlier, a federal court in Rhode Island went much further: rather than issuing orders for individual plaintiffs, the court struck down four entire policies that USCIS uses to halt processing of green card applications, work permits, naturalization petitions, and asylum claims. Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. concluded these policies exceeded USCIS's statutory authority, and according to reports, DHS responded with sharp criticism of the ruling, calling it judicial overreach masked in legal pretense—indicating the administration has no intention of conceding easily.
Who is Actually Stuck
The difference between a court order affecting 15 people and a nationwide policy termination is crucial, because most of those affected are not plaintiffs in any lawsuit. In Maryland and Massachusetts, two other rulings covered only around 250 people who filed suit, while according to estimates from advocacy group Project Press Unpause, USCIS has collected over 1 billion USD in processing fees from millions of cases the agency has not touched at all. The underlying policy driving this situation is memorandum PM-602-0194 issued in early 2026, affecting citizens from 39 countries placed on visa restriction lists, including international students awaiting work authorization.
For the Vietnamese American community, the impact does not stem from Vietnam being on the list of 39 countries—but rather from the mechanism USCIS is using to delay cases generally. According to previous analysis by Saigon Sentinel, nearly 112,100 people in California received green cards through adjustment of status alone in 2023, and immigration attorneys report that USCIS officers increasingly question applicants about why they do not return to their home country to await processing—a question that the National Immigration Law Center's Director of Legal Strategy says appears to come directly from new internal directives. A Vietnamese-born engineer married to or married by a citizen of one of the 39 countries, a healthcare worker sponsoring a family member, or someone on an H-1B visa transitioning to permanent residence can all fall into the same delay mechanism, even if they themselves are not citizens of the named country.
Lessons from Immigration Backlogs Past
This situation is not new to the first-generation refugee community. The U.S. immigration court system currently has a backlog of over 3.5 million cases, mostly asylum applications—a condition that law professor Michael Kagan attributes to the system having only mechanisms for quick denials, not quick approvals for clearly eligible cases. Older first-generation refugees who experienced years of waiting after 1975 understand the cost of delay: witnesses disappear, documents are lost, memories fade.
What to Watch
The federal government has not yet indicated whether it will appeal the Rhode Island ruling. Meanwhile, the cost of work visas continues to climb—the new H-1B fee has risen to 100,000 USD according to White House announcements—adding further financial pressure on Vietnamese American families with relatives in high-skilled work categories while their cases await processing. Another federal court in Northern California has also recently issued a preliminary injunction requiring USCIS to make a decision by a specific deadline, showing that legal pressure is mounting from multiple directions simultaneously. For families with suspended cases, practical advice is to maintain close contact with an immigration attorney, keep complete records of fee receipts, and closely monitor class action lawsuits—because a favorable ruling from another court does not automatically apply to your own case.