Lawsuits Mount Over Trump Green Card Freeze for 75 Countries

The State Department’s ongoing suspension of green cards for applicants from 75 countries because of potential dependence on public benefits is unlawful, a new lawsuit argues.

The ongoing visa freeze violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the separation of powers doctrine, according to a complaint filed Thursday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

It’s the latest challenge to the abrupt policy change, one of many new barriers the Trump administration has erected to foreign nationals entering the US.

The government has a mandatory duty to process visa applications within a reasonable time and its nationality-based pause was issued without any reasoned explanation for why it was necessary over individual reviews, the lawsuit said. The visa freeze also encroaches on the inherent power of Congress to regulate immigration, it argues.

The agency last month said it was halting green cards for the countries while it updates a screening process to identify immigrants who would be a financial burden to the country or “public charge.” It hasn’t said how long the freeze will last although it later clarified that adopted children of American parents can qualify for a National Interest Exception.

The visa freeze was one of a number of abrupt policy changes adding new barriers to foreign nationals entering the US.

The new lawsuit has more than 130 plaintiffs, including US citizens petitioning for family members as well as foreign nationals seeking employment-based green cards for exceptional abilities.

Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc. and several individual plaintiffs have challenged the immigrant visa freeze in a separate case in the Southern District of New York.

Like the new case in DC federal court, that lawsuit argued that the Immigration and Nationality Act requires individual public charge assessments and doesn’t allow for a blanket withholding of visa decisions.

Plaintiffs are represented by Red Eagle Law, LC.

The case is Storie v. Trump, D.D.C., No. 1:26-cv-00567, complaint filed 2/19/26 .