On Friday, June 24 a ruling by the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California in Behring Regional Center vs. Mayorkas et.al. granted a preliminary injunction on U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services’ (USCIS) interpretation of the EB-5 Reform & Integrity Act of 2022 (RIA) that requires all previously designated EB-5 Regional Centers to re-designate under the new law.
The Court ordered in part that previously designated EB-5 regional centers “must presently be permitted to operate;” this order enjoins the government from implementing its action deauthorizing EB-5 regional centers. This decision clears the way for investors to file new immigration petitions (I-526) under the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022.
U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria ruled that USCIS is “preliminarily enjoined from treating as deauthorized the previously designated regional centers based on its almost certainly erroneous interpretation of the Integrity Act. Of course, the agency may do whatever is reasonably necessary to ensure that existing regional centers comply with the Integrity Act, but those centers must presently be permitted to operate within the regime of the Act.”
“Judge Chhabria accepted IIUSA’s legal arguments and legal reasoning to extend nationwide relief to all regional centers and thereby reopen the EB-5 regional center program” said IIUSA counsel Ron Klasko (Klasko Immigration Law Partners) who together with Paul Hughes (McDermott Will & Emery) have represented the world’s largest business federation, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America, and five other Regional Center members – Golden Gate Global, CanAm Enterprises, Civitas Capital Group, EB5 Capital, and Pine State Regional Center – on a separate lawsuit on the same matter.
The five regional centers operators are gratified that the Court recognized the agency’s unlawful action and the significant harms resulting to all preexisting regional centers operating in good faith.
The litigation will continue with a new hearing scheduled for July 14th to hear arguments allowing the EB-5 trade organization Invest in the USA (IIUSA) to formally intervene as a plaintiff in the case.
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