WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — A United States (US) federal judge on Friday blocked a series of restrictions placed by President Donald Trump’s administration on legal immigration following last year’s shooting of two members of the National Guard by an Afghan immigrant.

District Judge John McConnell said the restrictions on asylum, work permit, green card and citizen applications from nationals of 39 African, Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern countries were unlawful.

The restrictions were imposed after the November 26, 2025 shooting in Washington of the National Guard members by an Afghan man who immigrated to the United States following the Taliban takeover in Kabul.

One of the National Guard members was killed in the attack.

The restrictive immigration policies enacted by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) “threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo”, McConnell wrote.

“USCIS’s hold on adjudications cannot be attributed to anything that these individuals did wrong; rather, it arises solely by the happenstance of their birth,” the judge said.

“Over six months later, many of those individuals remain without work, without legal status and without any meaningful ability to plan for their futures,” McConnell said.

USCIS, in imposing the restrictions, was using “pretextual concerns of ‘national security’ that mask anti-immigrant sentiments”, he said.

The judge, an appointee of Democratic president Barack Obama, said it was not his role to rule on “the wisdom of the government’s policy choices” but to determine whether they “comport with the law”.

“The court concludes that they do not,” he wrote. “USCIS’s actions are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious.”

Trump campaigned for the White House on a pledge to deport millions of undocumented migrants and, after the National Guard shooting, he said he planned to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries”.

Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who was charged with opening fire on the guardsmen just a few blocks from the White House, had been part of a CIA-backed “partner force” fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

He entered the United States as part of a resettlement program following the American military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.