Biden pick on federal bench forces State Department to restart green card lottery

A Biden-appointed federal judge ordered the State Department on Wednesday to open registration for the 2027 diversity visa lottery and run the green card program on a court-imposed schedule.

U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta granted a preliminary injunction directing Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his department to restart the process after it sat in limbo. The order requires the department to announce the registration period this week, open a 30-day electronic entry window by Oct. 18, and notify selected applicants by Nov. 19. Officials must then process and award the visas until the 2027 allotment runs out or the fiscal year ends next September.

Breitbart News reported the ruling came in a suit filed in July by Red Eagle Law, a Southern California immigration firm that handles lottery applicants. The firm argued the department’s failure to open 2027 registration amounted to a “de facto cancellation” and was “arbitrary, capricious, and not in accordance with law.” It said the delay had already cost it clients.

Government lawyers pushed back hard. They told the court the firm waited too long and that the statutory deadline to run the program had already passed, leaving no lawful path for a judge to force it open again.

Ohta herself had sounded skeptical weeks earlier. She denied the same firm’s emergency bid to force the program open and questioned whether she even had the power to act.

“You’re asking me to demand that the government restart this program.”

That bench comment came before she reversed course and issued the full preliminary injunction.

Lottery paused after campus shooting link

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem paused the diversity visa lottery after authorities found the Brown University shooter had entered the country through the program in 2017. The lottery has remained in limbo since that December decision.

Congress created the diversity visa program in 1990. It makes up to 50,000 immigrant visas available each year through a lottery system aimed at countries with historically low immigration rates to the United States.

The State Department did resume issuing some diversity visas in August under a separate court order. A second federal judge in Northern California also found the department had delayed processing in a related case. Still, 2027 registration stayed closed until Ohta’s Wednesday order.

The same pattern of court intervention has appeared elsewhere. In one recent fight, a Manhattan judge struck down Rubio’s 75-country immigrant visa freeze, showing how quickly federal courts can revise executive immigration decisions.

Josh Gerstein posted about Ohta’s lottery order on X. The post drew dismissive replies. Commenters questioned whether any judge can direct the executive branch to run an administrative program. Others focused on the name of the judge who issued the command.

Same judge previously freed MS-13 murder suspect

Ohta is a Biden appointee who immigrated from South Korea at age six. Her record includes other high-profile immigration rulings that have drawn sharp criticism from federal officials.

In a separate case, the same judge ordered the immediate release of David Antonio Aviles Perez, an MS-13 gang member known as “the witch.” He faces an aggravated murder conviction in absentia in El Salvador for a 2014 execution-style killing and a 20-year sentence. ICE had held him at Otay Mesa Detention Center since March 2026 pending removal after California authorities earlier freed him following a 2023 machete attack conviction.

Noticias Fox News detailed how Ohta found Fifth Amendment due process violations because officials held him five months without a bond hearing. She barred ICE from re-detaining him without a prior immigration judge bond determination. DHS condemned the move as putting American lives at risk and tied it to California sanctuary policies.

“This radical activist judge has put American lives at risk by releasing a wanted murderer… This is now the SECOND time this dangerous illegal has been released back onto the streets in California.”

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin issued that statement after the release order.

The New York Post reported Ohta required Aviles Perez’s release by 5 p.m. the next day unless authorities proved at a bail hearing that he posed a danger or flight risk. ICE had captured him in San Diego. Federal law enforcement officials blamed activist judges and the lack of swift prosecutor appeals. A similar release of another gang-affiliated murderer came from another Biden-appointed judge in the same period.

These rulings fit a broader tension between the executive branch and certain district courts over immigration enforcement. The Justice Department has moved in other venues to limit judges’ reach on such cases, including efforts to pull Minnesota judges off immigration dockets after public comments raised impartiality concerns.

Court timeline overrides executive pause

Ohta’s injunction leaves little room for the State Department to maneuver. Registration must be announced this week. The electronic entry window has to open by mid-October. Selected applicants need notification by mid-November. Processing continues until the visas are gone or the fiscal year closes.

Red Eagle Law framed the original inaction as unlawful. The firm said much of its practice involves lottery applicants and that the freeze had driven clients away. Government attorneys countered that the clock had simply run out under the statute and that no court could revive a deadline already missed.

The department now faces a direct order to restart a program the executive branch had paused on security grounds. That pause followed the discovery that a campus shooter had used the diversity visa route years earlier.

Similar push-and-pull has played out on other visa policies. After one court vacated a major freeze, the State Department fired back at the federal judge who issued the ruling, underscoring the friction when district courts dictate national entry rules.

Higher courts have sometimes restored executive tools in related areas. The Supreme Court, for example, stepped in to restore a citizenship check system for voter rolls after lower interference, showing the limits of trial-level overrides.

Ohta’s order does not address the underlying security rationale for the pause. It simply sets dates and commands the department to proceed. The diversity visa program will now move forward under judicial supervision rather than the timeline set by the elected administration.

When district judges revise the calendar for who can enter the country, voters lose the accountability they were promised at the ballot box.