The government sought an emergency stay pending appeal of a Rule 54(b) partial final judgment on two Administrative Procedure Act claims. The First Circuit docketed Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island et al. v. United States Citizenship and Immigration Services et al., No. 26-1703. On August 14, 2026, Judges Montecalvo, Aframe, and Dunlap entered the order. The panel granted the stay only as to the district court’s action on the Comprehensive Re-Review Policy, which the order quotes as directing USCIS personnel to “[c]onduct a comprehensive re-review of approved benefit requests for aliens from [certain countries] who entered the United States on or after January 20, 2021.” The request for stay was otherwise denied. The order is copied to “Honorable John J. McConnell.”
That is a partial stay pending appeal. It is not a reversal of the judgment, not a merits opinion, and not the March 26, 2025, freeze stay in New York v. Trump, No. 25-1236. The district case is Dorcas, D.R.I. No. 26-cv-132-JJM-PAS. On June 5, 2026, Chief Judge McConnell’s memorandum and order (ECF 28; 2026 WL 1622708) granted in part the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and vacated four USCIS policies: the Benefits Hold Policy, the Global Asylum Hold Policy, the Comprehensive Re-Review Policy, and the Country-Specific Factors Policy. On June 11 he entered the Rule 54(b) partial final judgment (ECF 36) on Counts I and II, repeating that those four policies were vacated and set aside as contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious under 5 U.S.C. § 706(2). The First Circuit stayed only the re-review piece. The stay was otherwise denied. A stay of one policy is not a full reversal.