EB–5 investors from India sue USCIS chief for dashing their US green card American dream

Seven Indian immigrant investors have sued the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), alleging that the government failed to apply important protections under the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act (RIA) and illegally denied their petitions for green cards.

On behalf of seven immigrant investors, the Galati Law Firm, LLC filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of California on June 17, 2025.

The immigrant investors alleged that their Form I-526 denials were illegal due to USCIS’s delay in implementing and attaching EB-5 good-faith investor protections.

Form I-526 is used by a standalone investor to petition U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for status as an immigrant to the United States under section 203(b)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), as amended.

According to the lawsuit, the noncompliant Texas EB-5 Regional Center should have been terminated no later than July 1, 2023, but USCIS willfully failed to follow Congressionally-imposed deadlines.

The Plaintiffs argue that this failure to terminate the Regional Center and issue Notices of Termination on time is a violation of their protections guaranteed under the RIA.

Consequently, Plaintiffs are unable to invest in a different business project that would allow them to continue their immigration journey.

Alexandra George Santhanam, Associate Attorney at The Galati Law Firm, LLC, and member of Plaintiffs’ legal team, stated, “Plaintiffs each invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the U.S. economy. 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. This is an injustice that the Court has the power to address and order the Defendant to remedy.”

Plaintiffs are asking the Court to declare USCIS’s inaction unlawful, reopen their EB-5 petitions, and provide the written notices necessary to reinvest their capital and continue their immigration processes.

USCIS administers the EB-5 Program under which foreign investors and their spouses and unmarried children under 21 are eligible to apply for lawful permanent residence to become a Green Card holder.

For this they need to make the necessary investment in a commercial enterprise in the United States and plan to create or preserve 10 permanent full-time jobs for qualified U.S. workers.

This program is known as EB-5 for the name of the employment-based fifth preference visa that participants receive. The minimum investment amount for an EB-5 visa is $1,050,000, and fora Targeted Employment Area minimum investment amount is $800,000, including infrastructure projects.