Russian Investor Can’t Challenge Visa Revocation in Court

A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services decision to revoke its approval of a Russian national’s immigrant investor visa can’t be reviewed by a federal court, a judge ruled.

Under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the court doesn’t have jurisdiction over “challenges to the substance of USCIS’s visa-petition revocation decision,” Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled Monday. This means he can’t review the agency’s decision to deny an EB-5 visa for investor Valeriy Karakenyan.

Specifically, the statute says that the “Secretary of Homeland Security may, at any time, for ...