Indian Investors Sue USCIS Over Botched EB-5 Green Cards
Plaintiffs say the agency ignored a 2022 law meant to protect them after their Texas regional center failed — leaving hundreds of thousands in legal limbo.
WASHINGTON — A group of Indian nationals is suing the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), claiming the agency unlawfully denied their green card petitions and failed to apply key protections under a 2022 immigration law, writes The Times of India.
The seven plaintiffs, who filed their case in federal court this week, had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars through the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program, which offers a path to permanent U.S. residency in exchange for job-creating investments.
They allege that USCIS denied their petitions without notifying them that their investment vehicle—a Texas-based regional center—had been terminated. That denial, they argue, violates the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, which Congress passed to protect good-faith investors in cases of fraud, failure, or noncompliance by regional centers.
All of the plaintiffs are investors who complied with the law, said Alexandra George Santhanam, an attorney representing the group.
According to the lawsuit, the plaintiffs filed EB-5 petitions—known as Form I-526—as early as 2019, investing at least $800,000 apiece in a regional center intended to fund qualifying economic development projects. In 2023, that center failed to pay required fees and submit annual compliance reports.
Under the 2022 law, USCIS is required to terminate noncompliant regional centers within 90 days and notify affected investors, allowing them to redirect their funds to compliant projects without penalty. But the plaintiffs say USCIS delayed action for more than a year and then summarily denied their petitions.
The investors say they received no notice of the termination, nor an opportunity to salvage their applications.
“They did everything in their power to apply for permanent residency in good faith. USCIS ignored the duties imposed upon it by Congress. Because of that, their American dream is now dead,” Santhanam said.
The lawsuit seeks to compel USCIS to reopen the denied petitions and officially notify the plaintiffs of their rights under the law. It also asks the court to declare the agency’s actions unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act.
USCIS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The EB-5 program has long drawn interest from Indian nationals as a workaround to lengthy employment-based green card backlogs. It requires investors to contribute $800,000 in high-unemployment or rural areas—or $1.05 million elsewhere—and create at least 10 full-time jobs for U.S. workers.
The plaintiffs argue that unless the court intervenes, they will suffer irreparable harm, including loss of immigration status, sunk capital, and years of planning for life in the United States.
This is among the first legal challenges to USCIS’s implementation of the 2022 EB-5 reform law, and legal experts say the outcome could have broad implications for thousands of foreign investors currently navigating the system.