Federal courts have now ruled against or temporarily blocked President Trump more than two hundred times during his second administration. On immigration alone — the issue voters care most about heading into the midterms — inferior federal judges are thwarting the president at nearly every turn.
One of the latest examples arrived in August. A Biden-appointed judge named Jeannette Vargas — confirmed to the federal bench just seven weeks before the 2024 election — blocked Trump's order to suspend visas from seventy-five high-risk countries. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had paused visas to nationals from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, and dozens of similar nations for a straightforward reason: data from the Council of Economic Advisers shows that more than thirty percent of immigrant households from those seventy-five countries depend on American public assistance programs. The others are filling employment-based visas that take jobs directly from American workers.
Judge Vargas decided instead that consular officers overseas have the exclusive authority over visa approvals, no matter what Trump’s State Department says. She even went further, declaring her ruling final without giving the Trump administration any opportunity to respond or revise its policy. That’s not “judicial review” — that’s judicial veto power. Expect to see the appeals process play out on this case.
And here is a detail worth noting: The lead plaintiff in this case is the Catholic Legal Immigration Network — a nonprofit initially founded by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, now largely funded by federal taxpayer dollars. The same left that fights any government money flowing to Catholic schools is perfectly comfortable with this Catholic-branded organization spending taxpayer funds to litigate against America First immigration policy. This group cheered the Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling earlier this summer. Notably, not one Catholic country in Europe grants birthright citizenship. Catholic Spain is currently struggling to deport sixty thousand migrants who swam into its territory after their own supreme court issued an activist ruling.
In the meantime, the Trump Administration is fighting back on H-1B visa abuse as well. They have issued a permanent fee of over one hundred thousand dollars per application — a measure that could generate $8.8 billion to fund immigration enforcement. A federal court struck down his earlier version, but this fight is far from over.
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