The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has issued a nationwide injunction halting a Department of Homeland Security policy that had allowed immigration detention centers to skip collecting fingerprints and photographs from detainees applying for legal status. Judge Tanya Chutkan found the policy—announced in December 2025 and quietly rolled out across 24 detention facilities—to be “arbitrary and capricious,” violating both the Administrative Procedure Act and congressional mandates for identity verification. For mobility-focused employers, the decision removes a major processing bottleneck. Since early this year, corporate immigration counsel reported that employment-based applications filed by detainees sometimes sat for months because U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) could not match records to missing biometrics. The injunction orders DHS to restore normal biometrics collection within 14 days and to prioritize backlogged cases. Technology vendors that supply mobile fingerprint units to detention centers are already seeing a surge in purchase orders, suggesting DHS will rely on contractors to meet the deadline. USCIS, meanwhile, told the court it will deploy 60 adjudicators on weekend shifts through December to clear approximately 37,000 pending employment authorization and adjustment-of-status cases. Human-rights groups hailed the ruling as a victory for due-process norms; business-immigration practitioners were more pragmatic. “When a detainee spouse’s work permit is stuck, the entire H-1B or L-1 assignment can implode,” said Elise Frazier, mobility counsel at a Fortune 100 manufacturer. She predicts that restoring biometrics will shave two to three months off current processing times—an early holiday present for global mobility managers.
Source: The Financial Express
