'Outright hostility': Federal judge unloads on Trump in blow to administration

A federal judge in Ohio has just issued a major blow against the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies, citing statements from both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance as proof of racist intent.

This is according to Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney, who on Monday posted, “JUST IN: A federal judge in Ohio, describing hostility toward nonwhite immigrants expressed by President Trump/VP Vance, becomes the latest judge to order the administration to unfreeze immigrant benefit applications frozen by USCIS.”

As the court opinion explained, “This case concerns the legality of a series of policies developed and implemented by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). These policies indefinitely pause USCIS’s final adjudication of pending immigration benefit applications submitted by foreign nationals from certain countries, and treat nationality from those countries as a significant and negative factor in that adjudication process.”

In other words, the Trump administration sought to ban the processing of green card and work authorization applications for immigrants from certain countries, penalizing them for nothing more than their nationality. What’s more, the judge found that there was no shortage of proof of this racist intent, citing the anti-immigrant rhetoric of Trump and Vance at length, particularly their assertions that Haitian immigrants were eating the pets of Ohioans.

According to the judge, “Both the President and the Vice President have publicly and repeatedly expressed outright hostility toward immigrants, both before and after the 2024 presidential election. Their ire appears focused on immigrants from countries in the Caribbean, South America, Africa, and Asia. As the Supreme Court just observed, President Trump’s comments have ‘broadly denigrate[d] countries’ and ‘malign[ed]’ certain groups of immigrants… These include the extraordinary statements that certain foreign nationals, including Haitians, are ‘poisoning the blood’ of the United States.”

What’s more, the judge noted, “This general hostility to immigration contrasts with an apparent interest in and preference for the migration of white people.” The opinion raises examples of Trump calling for more immigration from Scandinavia and welcoming white refugees from South Africa.

In the end, argues the judge, the administration was “exceeding authority” when it “unreasonably delayed” immigrant applications based on “shifting or post hoc rationales,” causing “irreparable harm.” The opinion lists several examples of this harm, such as the separation of families, the destruction of educational and career opportunities, and the disruption of cancer research.

As Cheney noted, this is just the latest in a string of several major setbacks courts have issued to Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. In June, a judge ended a ban on visa processing for applicants from 39 targeted countries. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court slapped down Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship. Then on Thursday, a court sharply curtailed the administration’s desire to detain migrants while deportation cases are proceeding.