Judge Forces US to Open Green Card Lottery for 55,000 Visas

A federal judge in San Diego has ordered the U.S. State Department to immediately open registration for the 2027 Diversity Visa lottery, rescuing the annual green card program that the Trump administration appeared to quietly shelve. U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta ruled from the bench on Wednesday, October 14, 2026, that the department's failure to launch registration was likely unlawful, and set a midnight deadline of Thursday, October 15, for the government to publicly announce the entry period.

The Harry S. Truman Building in Washington, D.C., headquarters of the U.S. Department of State. (File photo)

For tens of millions of would-be immigrants around the world, the ruling means the door to the DV-2027 lottery — roughly 55,000 immigrant visas issued each year — is being forced back open. But the order is preliminary, the timeline is extraordinarily compressed, and the administration could still ask a higher court to pause it. Here is what the judge ordered, why the lottery never opened, and what happens next.

A Lottery That Never Started

The Diversity Visa program has run for decades as a yearly lottery granting up to 55,000 immigrant visas — green cards — to applicants from countries with historically low immigration rates to the United States. Entry has always been free and is made only through the State Department's official website, dvprogram.state.gov.

On November 5, 2025, the State Department announced that it was changing the DV-2027 entry process. It said a new registration start date and the date for checking selection results would be announced "as soon as practicable." The announcement retained October 1, 2026, through September 30, 2027, as the visa application period for DV-2027 selectees — but it named no entry window. Nearly a year later, prospective applicants were still waiting, and the fiscal year 2027 opened on October 1, 2026, with no lottery at all.

A California immigration law firm, Red Eagle Law, took the government to court, calling the department's inaction a "de facto cancellation" of the program and arguing that tens of thousands of legally authorized visas were being allowed to evaporate.

The Jacob Weinberger U.S. Courthouse in San Diego, California, where Judge Jinsook Ohta issued the October 14, 2026 injunction. (File photo)

The Ruling: Red Eagle Law v. Rubio

On October 14, 2026, U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta of the federal court in San Diego issued a preliminary injunction in the case Red Eagle Law v. Rubio, ordering Secretary of State Marco Rubio to open registration immediately. Judge Ohta ruled from the bench that the department's inaction was likely unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act, the law that governs how federal agencies must exercise their authority.

According to reporting on the order, the court directed the State Department to publicly announce the registration period by midnight Eastern time on Thursday, October 15, 2026, with registration itself required to open and remain accessible for 30 days. After the ruling, Red Eagle Law founder Curtis Morrison told Courthouse News simply: "We won."

The Justice Department argued in court that complying with the order on such a tight timeline is "legally impossible," according to reporting on the proceedings — and the government can ask Judge Ohta or the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to stay the injunction while it appeals. If a stay were granted after entries had already been submitted, the status of those entries would be uncertain.

Key Dates at a Glance

According to reporting on the court's order, the compressed DV-2027 calendar now looks like this: the State Department must publicly announce registration by October 15, 2026; the entry window must open by October 18, 2026, and remain open for 30 days; selected applicants must be notified by November 19, 2026; and September 30, 2027, is the hard deadline — the last day any DV-2027 visa can be issued.

A process that normally takes nearly two years will now have to fit into roughly eleven months. The program's visas expire at the end of the fiscal year whether or not they are used — a point that gives this compressed schedule real stakes.

What the Program Is — and Who It Is For

The Diversity Visa program makes up to 55,000 immigrant visas available each year to people from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. Applicants enter during a designated registration window, are selected at random by computer, and then must meet eligibility requirements — including education or work-experience thresholds — before a visa can be issued.

Because the entry period for DV-2027 never opened, no ordinary selection process ever produced winners for this year's program. The court order is designed to recreate that process on an accelerated timetable.

One caution echoed by immigration attorneys and watchdog outlets alike: the only legitimate entry site is dvprogram.state.gov. Entry to the lottery has always been free, and scam sites routinely spring up around each registration window promising early registration or guaranteed selection for a fee. No one can register yet, and no third party can register on anyone's behalf — applicants should wait for the official dates posted on the government site only.

The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, long a symbol of immigration to the United States. (File photo)

What This Means

The ruling is the latest in a long-running pattern of judges intervening in the Trump administration's immigration policies. It is also a direct replay of history: in September 2020, a federal judge ordered the first Trump administration to resume the Diversity Visa program after it was frozen during the pandemic.

For the administration, the order is a rebuke of the strategy of accomplishing through inaction what would be difficult through a formal, challengeable policy change. Judge Ohta's finding — that the department's inaction was likely unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act — treats the government's silence as an agency decision, and one the law does not permit.

For applicants, the practical meaning is simpler and more urgent: a chance that appeared dead is alive again, but the window to act will be short and the competition intense. Past experience shows what a late start costs — reporting on the previous program cycle noted that only about 2,026 diversity visas were issued in the final month of the DV-2026 year, a small fraction of what was available.

What Happens Next

The immediate question is whether the State Department complies by Thursday's deadline — and whether the Justice Department seeks a stay from Judge Ohta or the Ninth Circuit. A stay would freeze the order while the appeal proceeds, potentially derailing the entire compressed timeline.

Separately, the outcome of the related DV-2026 litigation remains relevant background: in another California case, Medani v. Trump, a judge approved an additional visa-processing window running October 14–23, 2026, for that prior year's selectees — a reminder that courts have repeatedly had to step in to keep diversity-visa numbers from being lost to administrative delays.

The longer-term stakes extend beyond a single lottery. The Diversity Visa program has long been a target of restriction efforts, and how the administration responds to this order — compliance, appeal, or resistance — will signal how much of the court-ordered program actually materializes before the hard deadline of September 30, 2027.

For now, though, the order stands: the DV-2027 green card lottery, which the government never opened, must now open — and the clock is already running.##