CAIR-Columbus announced today the filing of two federal lawsuits 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 two Muslim legal permanent residents whose citizenship applications have been pending for an unreasonable amount of time without adjudication – sixteen and eighteen months respectively.
Neither of the Plaintiffs have any criminal history and one of the Plaintiffs is a doctor at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Both Plaintiffs have been repeatedly told by USCIS that they are unable to determine when the adjudication of their cases will be completed. Plaintiffs have made numerous other inquiries with USCIS on the status of their applications but have received the same proforma responses from USCIS each time.
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-two different plaintiffs. The vast majority of those lawsuits have already been successfully resolved in favor of the Plaintiffs.
“USCIS has been instructed by this 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. “One of the Plaintiffs here is a doctor who been employed by the Department of Veterans Affairs for the past twelve years. It is simply unjust that a doctor who serves our nation’s veterans and is subject to regular security clearances is experiencing an unexplained delay in becoming a citizen.”
The complaints, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, request the Court to order USCIS to immediately issue a decision on the pending applications and also request attorney fees and damages.
CAIR-Columbus is encouraging anyone experiencing a similar type of immigration application delay to request help by filing a report on the website at www.cair-columbus.com or by calling the CAIR Columbus Legal Department at 614-451-3232.