White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers in a statement said the Trump administration is confident the US district judge's order will be reversed on appeal.
A US flag and a US H-1B Visa application form are seen in this illustration taken, Sep 22, 2025. (Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic)
09 Jun 2026 05:05AM
BOSTON: A federal judge on Monday (Jun 8) struck down a US$100,000 fee US President Donald Trump imposed on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers, concluding that it constituted an unlawful tax Congress never authorised.US District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston issued the ruling in a lawsuit filed by 20 Democratic state attorneys general challenging a fee Trump announced in September that dramatically raised the cost of obtaining H-1B visas.The administration argued the fee constituted a lawful monetary penalty that the president was authorised to impose under federal immigration law, which gives him the power to restrict the entry of certain foreign nationals when he deems it "detrimental to the interests of the United States."But Sorokin concluded that the fee was not a penalty but a tax that the Republican president lacked any authorisation from Congress to issue and that the US State Department and US Citizenship and Immigration Services could not implement.
