Judge Blocks Trump Administration From Stripping Work Permits From Asylum Seekers

BOSTON — A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from stripping tens of thousands of asylum seekers and immigrants with Temporary Protected Status of their ability to work legally in the United States.

U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton, sitting in the District of Massachusetts, sided with a coalition of immigrant rights groups and labor unions that sued U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services over a bundle of policies rolled out this year. "The consequences faced by plaintiffs are potentially severe," Gorton wrote in the order.

The case, Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts et al. v. USCIS et al., was brought by the Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts, the National TPS Alliance, the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, the Service Employees International Union and SEIU's 32BJ local. The legal group Democracy Forward is representing the plaintiffs.

Three policies are on hold. The first allowed USCIS to reject asylum applications outright and terminate work permits when applicants failed to pay a newly created asylum fee, without adequate notice or any chance to appeal. The second, an interim final rule issued in April 2026, eliminated the longstanding 30-day deadline for the agency to decide initial asylum work authorization applications — a change that let USCIS leave applicants in limbo indefinitely. The third applied the new rules retroactively to TPS holders from El Salvador, Sudan and Ukraine.

Gorton did not block the fee itself. What he blocked were the consequences of not paying it: rejection of the underlying application, termination of an existing work permit, and referral into removal proceedings. In practical terms, an asylum seeker who misses the payment can still be pursued for the money, but cannot immediately lose the right to hold a job or be pushed toward deportation while the case is litigated.

A decision on a longer-term injunction is scheduled for Aug. 5. Until then the freeze stands.

The ruling lands in the middle of a broader legal fight over work authorization and deportation protections. The Supreme Court cleared the administration in June to end TPS for Haitians and Syrians in a 6-3 decision, and a separate judge froze an attempt to strip deportation protection from South Sudanese nationals last week, prompting the Department of Homeland Security to accuse the court of "open defiance." Protection for roughly 300,000 Haitians has already lapsed, and ICE has begun preparing enforcement sweeps in cities with large affected populations, including Springfield, Ohio.

For the people covered by Gorton's order, the stakes are immediate and narrow. A revoked work permit does not just end a paycheck; it typically ends a driver's license, a lease application and employer-sponsored health coverage at the same time. The plaintiffs argued that the agency was using a fee — not a finding on the merits of anyone's asylum claim — to trigger all of it. For now, a judge in Boston has agreed that the trigger is too fast.