A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a Chinese national seeking to overturn the denial of her investor visa, ruling that federal courts cannot hear the case because she failed to exhaust internal immigration appeals first.
Background of the Case
U.S. District Judge Jia M. Cobb granted the government’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Linhong Liu against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Joseph Edlow, and other immigration officials.
Liu originally submitted her Form I-526 investor petition in 2015 after making a $500,000 investment in a U.S. business enterprise, relying on a third-party currency exchanger to convert Chinese renminbi into U.S. dollars. USCIS’s Immigrant Investor Program Office issued a Notice of Intent to Deny in September 2024 and formally denied her petition that December.
Agency officials stated that Liu failed to prove the currency exchanger was legally licensed or that her investment capital came from lawful sources. Liu subsequently filed two separate motions requesting that the program office reopen and reconsider the denial, but both were rejected in early 2025.
Judge’s Ruling
Instead of filing an appeal with the agency’s Administrative Appeals Office, Liu filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing that the denial was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act.
Government attorneys moved to dismiss the case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, pointing to the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act (RIA) passed by Congress in March 2022. The law updated the Immigration and Nationality Act to mandate administrative appellate review and established that “no court shall have jurisdiction to review a determination… until the alien investor has exhausted all administrative appeals.”
Judge Cobb rejected Liu’s argument that applying the 2022 law to her case was an impermissible retroactive application of a statute, given that she had originally filed her visa petition back in 2015.
The court found that the legal bar applies to the date the agency renders its decision, not the date the applicant submits the original paperwork. Because USCIS issued its denial in December 2024—more than two years after the RIA was enacted—the court found the law applied prospectively to her case.
Original reporting: Tampa Free Press — read the source article.
