Liberal court delivers immigration win for Trump as judge warns of ‘floodgates’ if law firm succeededhttps://www.foxnews.com/politics/liberal-court-delivers-immigration-win-trump-judge-warns-floodgates-law-firm-succeededA liberal-majority appeals court in California handed the Trump administration a victory by blocking a lower court's ruling that ordered the State Department to open its application pool for the 2027 Diversity Visa lottery, which admits roughly 55,000 immigrants from low-immigration countries each year.
In a 3-0 ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta requiring the lottery pool to be opened after Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a notice in November delaying the program's acceptance of new applications in order to "implement certain changes," but the application period never opened.
The three-judge panel consisted of Clinton appointee Mary Margaret McKeown, Biden appointee Holly A. Thomas and Bush appointee Norman Randy Smith wrote a separate concurrence.
A month later, the State Department ordered an indefinite pause on issuing diversity visas after a Portuguese national who was issued a lottery visa in 2017 committed a mass shooting at Brown University, killing two people and injuring nine others. The shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, was also tied to the murder of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor two days after the Brown University shooting.
Basically, the 3 judges denied a law firm for being the immigration equivalent of ambulance-chaser lawyers.