With time running out to process thousands of applications, a federal judge directed the Trump administration to extend a deadline by 10 days following claims that officials deliberately stalled a visa program.
In his Wednesday ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Edward Davila, based in Northern California, concluded, “Considering this series of events, the Court finds the most measured and tailored remedy … is to require that DOS (Department of State) continue adjudicating Diversity Visas” for 10 additional days. It is the same period of time that DOS “failed to instruct all diplomatic and consular posts to comply with the Court’s order.”
He fell short, however, of granting the plaintiffs’ call to hold the government in contempt over its response to an Aug. 28 court order.
At stake are tens of thousands of visas that can be legally awarded each year under the Diversity Visa program, also known as the Green Card Lottery. According to Bonsall attorney Curtis Morrison, who is class counsel for the 2026 applicants in the lottery, 10,974 visas have been awarded so far. When the year began, there were 52,101 slots available.
Morrison says his team provided Davila with evidence of what he alleges have been deliberate delay tactics by the federal government. Some of that proof includes the government’s own documents, which he says show that the State Department was unnecessarily delaying processing of applications following the judge’s August order to reopen the DV program. President Donald Trump shut it down late last year.
Davila had ordered the government to process as many applications as possible before the deadline, which was Wednesday.
Because it appeared little progress had been made, Morrison and other attorneys representing immigrants seeking visas filed a motion last month asking the court to hold the Trump administration in civil contempt for allegedly defying the order to restart the visa program.
According to court documents, the State Department reported that “(one) Diversity Visa application has been approved for issuance.” The next report showed limited improvement, stating that “approximately (six) new interviews and 85 re-interviews have taken place.”
But Morrison noted that in the two days before the deadline, “the government released information that they had processed 1,500 visas in two days.”
Morrison does not think those numbers are accurate. He accused the State Department of trying to beef up its required update by including plaintiffs who are part of another visa case being heard by a different judge in Washington, D.C.
The move apparently backfired. Morrison said Davila decided to include the D.C. case plaintiffs in his ruling extending the deadline to Oct. 10.
“I think the government brought that upon themselves with the status reports that they gave to the judge,” Morrison said. “This means the 1,500 applicants in D.C. also get the benefit of a 10-day extension.”
The shutdown of the DV program for 2026 also means there has been no processing of 2027 applicants, something Morrison said “should have happened like 11 or 12 months ago.”
That lack of action has spawned another case, this time in San Diego. Morrison is set to appear before Federal District Judge Jinsook Ohta in mid-October to argue that the 2027 lottery should be started immediately.
Each Green Card Lottery begins with an estimated 20 million applicants. That number is narrowed down to 120,000, from which the final group of about 55,000 is chosen to obtain visas, leading to green cards.
