CAIR-Columbus announced today the filing of a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of Ohio against the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Attorney General of the United States, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on behalf of a Muslim woman whose citizenship application has been pending for almost two and a half years without adjudication. The woman has no criminal history and has been a permanent resident of the United States since 2010.
Plaintiff has been repeatedly told by USCIS that they are unable to determine when the adjudication of the case will be completed. Plaintiff has made numerous other inquiries with USCIS on the status of her application but has received the same proforma response from USCIS.
CAIR-Columbus attorneys continue to see an increase in delays of all types of immigration applications. Since the beginning of 2017 alone, CAIR-Columbus has filed immigration delay lawsuits for over thirty different plaintiffs. The vast majority of those lawsuits have already been successfully resolved in favor of Plaintiffs.
“USCIS has been instructed by the administration to ‘rigorously enforce all grounds of inadmissibility and/or denial of immigration benefits’ and we believe this is contributing to USCIS indefinitely delaying applications while they look for any reason to deny, even for minor issues that typically would not result in a denial,” said CAIR-Columbus Legal Director Romin Iqbal.
“As these delays cause real suffering to people who have played by the rules and done nothing wrong, we are left with no choice but to continue filing these lawsuits until USCIS stops this practice of unreasonable and unexplained delays” added Iqbal.
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio on March 21st, requests the Court to order USCIS to immediately issue a decision on the pending application and requests attorney fees and damages.