John Does vs U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

Filing Date:May 05, 2016

Case:John Does v. USCIS, et. al.,

Jurisdiction:Federal District Court for the District of Columbia

Status:Pending

Civil / Criminal:Civil

Action exceeding statutory authority

Denial of petition

Plaintiffs’ opposition relies on the application of a much higher standard of review than is permitted under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) and seeks an improper limit on agency authority to adjudicate pending petitions where no injunction had been entered. The administrative record in this case is comprised of three exemplar records (labeled John Doe 1 (“JD1”), John Doe 2 (“JD2”), and John Doe 3 (“JD3”)) which represent the three general categories of denials issued to Plaintiffs. Defendants are entitled to judgment on Plaintiffs’ claims challenging the JD3 and JD1 denials and seek remand on the JD2 denial so that the agency may reconsider those denials in a manner consistent with the Court’s decision on the parties’ cross-motions. Defendants are entitled to summary judgment on the sufficiency of the JD3 denials. There, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) correctly identified four independent grounds for denying Plaintiffs’ petitions: (1) Plaintiffs’ proposed investment in an ever-changing list of job creating entities is not sufficient to show at the time the petition was Case.