Judge bars citizenship request block
Pentagon told not to stop fast-track applications for 2,000 soldiers
WASHINGTON — A federal judge has ordered the Defense Department not to block fasttracked citizenship applications that it promised to about 2,000 foreign-born U.S. Army Reserve soldiers under their enlistment contracts.
The order Wednesday came in an ongoing lawsuit over the department’s year-old effort to kill a program designed to attract foreign-born military recruits who possess medical or language skills urgently needed in U.S. military operations. In exchange for serving, those recruits were promised a quicker route to citizenship.
U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle of Washington issued a rare preliminary injunction saying that while the lawsuit can move ahead, the government cannot in the meantime withhold a form that three named Army plaintiffs and other military members in similar situations need to start the vetting for citizenship.
Huvelle in her order also said that the members of the military in the lawsuit probably would succeed in proving the Pentagon’s latest moves in the crackdown on immigrant recruits were “arbitrary and capricious.”
Her decision granted provisional class-action status to at least some affected U.S. service members and marked the first court ruling on the new policy, which has been challenged in lawsuits across the country. The court action came less than two weeks after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the military was taking steps “to save the program, if it can be saved.”
Defense officials have restricted the fast-track citizenship program, citing the “espionage potential” posed by foreign-born recruits, but advocates said the changes have deprived the military of urgently needed skills in ongoing conflicts, while putting the legal status of more than 1,000 recruits in jeopardy.
In a 35-page opinion issued Wednesday, Huvelle said new Pentagon provisions threatened to delay soldiers’ citizenship applications by years, upending their lives, blocking their careers and potentially exposing them to deportation.
“The record shows that [Department of Defense] … policy is causing irreparable harm to plaintiffs,” Huvelle wrote. “Plaintiffs live in constant fear that they will lose their work or student visas, or be discharged, deported, and subject to harsh punishment in their country of origin for joining a foreign military.”
The Justice Department declined to comment, spokesman Devin O’Malley said Thursday.
The plaintiffs, Mahlon Kirwa, Santhosh Meenhallimath and Ashok Viswanathan, who have trained in the Army Reserves’ Selected Reserves since at least January, and their attorneys declined to comment because of pending litigation, said lead attorney Douglas Baruch.