US court blocks Trump's $100,000 H-1B visa fee for a second time
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A US federal judge has ordered a halt to the $100,000 fee that President Donald Trump imposed on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers, marking the second such block after another judge in Boston temporarily paused the fee in June. Haywood Gilliam, a US district judge in Oakland, California, ruled that US Citizenship and Immigration Services and the State Department failed to follow the required procedures in issuing the regulation before enforcing the fee. Gilliam, who was appointed by Barack Obama, ordered, in response to a request from a coalition of labor unions, employers and nonprofit organizations, that the relevant agencies halt enforcement of Trump's fee until the case the coalition filed in October 2025 is resolved. Previously, a federal judge in Boston temporarily blocked the fee in June in a separate case brought by 20 states, while the appeals court in Boston ruled in July not to block that decision. The H-1B visa program allows US employers to hire foreign workers trained in specialized fields, with 65,000 visas allocated each year and another 20,000 for workers with advanced degrees; the visas are valid for three to six years. An H-1B application generally carries a fee of about $2,000 to $5,000, but Trump's order set a new fee of $100,000, which was originally due to expire on September 21, though Trump recently extended the collection period by another year. Meanwhile, the US Department of Homeland Security proposed in August a permanent fee of about $103,000, which, if formally enacted, is likely to be challenged in court. Democracy Forward, the legal group representing the plaintiffs, welcomed the ruling, with its lawyer Steve Bressler saying the decision helps protect a system that was thrown into chaos overnight.