A federal judge has denied President Donald Trump’s effort to impose a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa applicants seeking high-skilled jobs in the United States, which would have imposed the massive fee on tens of thousands of foreign workers.
U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin of Boston, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, on Monday ruled against Trump’s six-figure fee on the basis that it was an illegal tax Congress had never approved.
The decision is a blow to the White House as it moves to toughen the nation’s immigration policies, and it is a victory for the 20 Democratic state attorneys who filed the lawsuit following Trump’s announcement last September.
The Trump administration had made the case that the executive branch had the legal authority to impose a financial penalty under federal immigration law. The Constitution mandates that Congress set immigration levels.
However, the White House had maintained that Trump had the ability to restrict the entry of select foreigners when it determined to be “detrimental to the interests of the United States,” as was the basis for a similar limitation imposed during the pandemic.
The judge ruled that the fee was a new tax, not a penalty. Sorokin stated that Trump lacked the congressional permission needed to impose a tax.
“Here, the substance and application of the $100,000 payment reveal that it is a tax, regardless of what the payment is called,” Sorokin wrote in his ruling.
HOW DHS IS SECURING THE FIFA WORLD CUP
Sorokin pointed to the Supreme Court’s February ruling, which similarly concluded that the tariffs Trump imposed in 2025 were considered a tax and that a president did not have the authority to impose a tax.
The U.S. government makes 65,000 H-1B visas available each year and an additional 20,000 visas for workers who have advanced higher education degrees.