Mandamus decisions / Western District of Virginia

Ahmed v. Rubio

Western District of VirginiaJasmine H. YoonDecided March 31, 2026No. 5:26-cv-00020

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What the decision decided

Each value cites the passage it was read from. Values read by a model were checked against that passage; values read by rule come from fixed text patterns. Read the decision before relying on either.

Agency	Department of State Read by a model Plaintiff Hafsa Ahmed brings this suit to compel government Defendants Marco Rubio, United States Department of State, and the Bureau of Consular Affairs to complete adjudication of her husband’s immigrant visa application.
Form or filing	221(g) (consular refusal); DS-260 (immigrant visa) Read by a model After completing his visa interview in January 2026, Ahmed’s husband received a notice of refusal and was informed his application was marked for administrative processing.
What the suit asked for	Finish 221(g) processing Read by a model Ahmed asks the court to compel Defendants to “resume and complete lawful, good- faith, individualized adjudication of [her husband’s] immigrant visa application.”
Kind of order	A ruling on a motion or the petition Read by a model For the reasons stated below, the court will grant Defendants’ motion, dismiss the complaint, and deny Plaintiff’s emergency motion as moot.
Motion decided	Motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction; Preliminary injunction or TRO Read by a model For the foregoing reasons, the court will grant Defendants’ motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. (Dkt. 6.) Accordingly, the court will also deny as moot Ahmed’s motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction.
Whose motion	Cross-motions Read by a model This matter is before the court on Defendants’ motion to dismiss Plaintiff’s complaint, (Dkt. 6), and Plaintiff’s motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, (Dkt. 2).
Disposition	Dismissed The case or every delay claim was dismissed for a reason other than mootness. Read by a model For the reasons stated below, the court will grant Defendants’ motion, dismiss the complaint, and deny Plaintiff’s emergency motion as moot.
Prevailing party	Government Read by a model For the foregoing reasons, the court will grant Defendants’ motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
The delay claim	Dismissed Read by a model For the foregoing reasons, the court will grant Defendants’ motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
Months pending	0.8 months from the application to the suit; 2.3 months from the application to the court's decision Read by a model Here, Shakeel’s visa application was refused by the consular officer in Manama, Bahrain after Shakeel’s interview on January 19, 2026.
TRAC factors	The court did not weigh the TRAC factors Read by a model
Threshold rulings	No duty to re-adjudicate a 221(g) refusal Read by a model The court therefore finds that Ahmed does not plausibly allege that Defendants failed to take a discrete agency action that they are required to take, nor that Defendants had any clear duty to act after refusing the application.
Nationality	Pakistan Read by a model Shakeel “was informed by the consular officer that visa processing could not continue due to categorical policy considerations affecting Pakistani nationals”
I-130 category	Immediate relative Read by a model Plaintiff Hafsa Ahmed filed an immediate relative immigration visa petition on behalf of her spouse, Muhammad Shakeel, on February 26, 2024.

How the case ended

Docket: No. 5:26-cv-00020
Filed: February 13, 2026
Ended: March 31, 2026
Suit's filing to its end: 46 days
How it ended: Dismissed on jurisdiction or the merits
From the record: idb disp 3 (dismissed: lack of jurisdiction)

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.

Department of State v. Muñoz, 602 U.S. 899

Supreme Court, June 21, 2024. A U.S. citizen has no fundamental liberty interest in a noncitizen spouse's admission, so marriage alone entitles the citizen neither to Mandel review of the consular refusal nor to an explanation beyond the statutory citation.

ImmCite: treatment available, history exists, not clearance
Trump v. Hawaii, 585 U.S. 667

Supreme Court, June 26, 2018. Mandel's facially-legitimate-and-bona-fide standard governs constitutional challenges to entry restrictions, and a citation to a valid statutory ground ordinarily satisfies it.

ImmCite: treatment available, history exists, not clearance
Kleindienst v. Mandel, 408 U.S. 753

Supreme Court, June 29, 1972. When a visa refusal burdens a U.S. citizen's own constitutional rights, courts ask only whether the Executive gave a facially legitimate and bona fide reason and do not look behind it.

ImmCite: treatment available, history exists, not clearance
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
Sesay v. United States, 984 F.3d 312

Fourth Circuit, January 5, 2021. Consular nonreviewability bars review of a relative's visa refusal; under Din and Trump v. Hawaii a valid statutory citation satisfies Mandel, and the court will not look behind it absent a particularized showing of bad faith.

ImmCite: treatment available, history exists, not clearance. ImmCite has read all 4 published decisions citing this case, as of 2026-10-30; none treats it adversely. That describes those decisions; it is not a determination that the case is good law.
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.