Mandamus decisions / District of Maryland

Karaoglu v. US Department of Homeland Security

District of MarylandDeborah K. ChasanowDecided July 19, 2023No. 8:23-cv-00749

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What the decision decided

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Agency	USCIS Read by a model Plaintiff Yasar Karaoglu filed this action on March 17, 2023, seeking to compel the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (“USCIS”) to schedule an asylum interview and issue a determination on his I-589 Application for Asylum that has been pending since November 18, 2019.
Form or filing	I-589 (asylum) Read by a model his I-589 Application for Asylum
What the suit asked for	Decide the asylum application Read by a model to schedule an asylum interview and issue a determination on his I-589 Application for Asylum
Kind of order	A transfer order Read by a model Defendants’ motion to transfer will be granted, although the choice of transferee district will be deferred.
Motion decided	Transfer Read by a model Defendants’ motion to transfer will be granted, although the choice of transferee district will be deferred.
Whose motion	The government's motion Read by a model On June 2, 2023, Defendants filed a motion to transfer this action to the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina
Disposition	Transferred to another court An order moving the case to another court. It decides where the suit is heard, not who wins, so it is not counted as either side's win. Read by a model Defendants’ motion to transfer will be granted, although the choice of transferee district will be deferred.
Prevailing party	Neither side Read by a model Defendants’ motion to transfer will be granted, although the choice of transferee district will be deferred.
The delay claim	Not decided here Read by a model Accordingly, this action will be transferred either to the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina or the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia for further consideration of Plaintiff’s complaint as may be appropriate.
Months pending	39.9 months from the application to the suit; 44 months from the application to the court's decision Read by a model his I-589 Application for Asylum that has been pending since November 18, 2019.
TRAC factors	The court did not weigh the TRAC factors Read by a model
Threshold rulings	None Read by a model

How the case ended

Docket: No. 8:23-cv-00749
Filed: March 17, 2023
Ended: July 25, 2023
Suit's filing to its end: 130 days
How it ended: Transferred
From the record: idb disp 0 (transferred to another district)

A voluntary or stipulated dismissal is how most suits end once the agency acts; the docket rarely says why. Other suits in this court.

Supreme Court and Fourth Circuit authority

District decisions bind no one. On the questions this decision raises, the Supreme Court decisions and the circuit's published decisions listed here bind this court; a circuit disposition marked nonprecedential was not published as precedent and is persuasive only. ImmCite status as read November 3, 2026. Check the current status before relying on one.

Norton v. Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, 542 U.S. 55

Supreme Court, June 14, 2004. Section 706(1) and mandamus reach only a discrete agency action that the agency is legally required to take, so a court cannot compel programmatic improvements or action the law leaves to agency discretion.

ImmCite: treatment available, history exists, not clearance
Gonzalez v. Cuccinelli, 985 F.3d 357

Fourth Circuit, January 14, 2021. Courts may review delay in placing U-visa petitioners on the waitlist under the TRAC factors and should not dismiss such claims at the pleading stage, but lack jurisdiction over delay in pre-waitlist work-permit requests, a point on which the Sixth Circuit disagrees.

ImmCite: caution, adverse or limiting treatment found. Rejected in the Sixth Circuit by Barrios Garcia v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 25 F.4th 430 (2022).
Lovo v. Miller, 107 F.4th 199

Fourth Circuit, July 3, 2024. The 'decision or action' language of § 1182(a)(9)(B)(v), which the court treated as coextensive with § 1252(a)(2)(B)(ii), does not reach USCIS inaction, so a district court may hear a claim that USCIS unreasonably delayed a provisional unlawful-presence waiver.

ImmCite: treatment available, history exists, not clearance. ImmCite has read all 5 published decisions citing this case, as of 2026-10-29; none treats it adversely. That describes those decisions; it is not a determination that the case is good law.