Farra v. United States Citizenship and Immigration Services

Background

Annas Farra sued the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) over delay in deciding Farra’s naturalization application. USCIS conducted Farra’s first interview on February 25, 2026. After 120 days passed without a decision, Farra filed a second amended complaint invoking 8 U.S.C. § 1447(b), which allows an applicant to ask a federal court to hold a hearing when USCIS has not decided the application within the required period.

The statute gives the court authority either to decide the naturalization matter or to send it back to USCIS with instructions. USCIS moved to remand, stating that it could decide the application within 15 days after remand. USCIS argued that an agency decision would be more efficient and would create a fuller administrative record if Farra later sought court review. Farra opposed remand, arguing that two Notices of Intent to Deny showed USCIS likely planned to deny the application and that the court could resolve the matter more efficiently.

Reasoning

The court noted that Farra’s application had been pending for more than two years, a period that other courts have considered potentially unreasonable. Unlike a situation in which USCIS merely intended to issue a notice, USCIS had already issued two Notices of Intent to Deny and represented that it could resolve the application within days. The court viewed those circumstances as indicating that the factual record was sufficiently developed.

The court also concluded that USCIS likely intended to deny the application, although it stated that denial was not certain. The court referred to USCIS’s allegations concerning Farra’s interview, Farra’s communications with two USCIS employees through their personal social-media accounts, and allegations of possible fraud and other criminal conduct. The court said these matters appeared related to USCIS’s position that Farra had not shown the required good moral character under 8 U.S.C. § 1427(a)(3).

The court expressly did not decide whether USCIS would be correct to deny the application, whether Farra had acted appropriately, or whether USCIS had acted unreasonably. It reasoned that remand would provide little benefit if the likely result was an agency denial followed by an administrative appeal and then the same fresh judicial review available under 8 U.S.C. § 1421(c). The court also rejected USCIS’s reliance on a regulation calling for a review hearing within 180 days of an administrative appeal, noting that the regulation sets a deadline for a hearing rather than a decision and that at least one court had questioned whether the deadline was enforceable.

Ruling

Judge A. J. Cisneros denied USCIS’s Motion to Remand without oral argument. The court vacated the hearing previously scheduled for September 24, 2026. It ordered the parties to file a joint case-management statement proposing a schedule for judicial resolution of Farra’s naturalization application by October 1, 2026, and to appear by videoconference for a case-management conference on October 8, 2026, at 1:30 p.m. The order did not decide whether Farra’s application should be granted or denied.