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.
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.
In a memorandum opinion issued Wednesday, Judge Cobb held that a 2022 federal law explicitly bars courts from reviewing EB-5 investor visa denials until applicants complete all available administrative appeals.
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. In each dismissal notice, USCIS informed Liu of her right to appeal the decision to the agency’s Administrative Appeals Office, which conducts an independent review of denied petitions.
Instead of filing an appeal with that 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.”
Liu argued 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.
Judge Cobb rejected that argument, holding 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.
“Although Liu filed her I-526 petition before the statute’s enactment, the Program Office issued the denial of her petition, i.e., the specific determination that Liu now challenges, on December 4, 2024, well after the RIA went into effect in 2022,” Cobb wrote in the opinion. “The Court therefore agrees with Defendants that the RIA’s jurisdictional bar operates prospectively here based on the date of the agency’s ‘determination.'”
The court also dismissed arguments that agency policy manuals or administrative silence exempted Liu from the requirement, noting that administrative exhaustion was explicitly commanded by Congress in the statutory text.
Because Liu did not pursue an appeal with the Administrative Appeals Office before turning to the court system, Judge Cobb concluded the court lacked authority to decide the merits of her claims and dismissed the case.
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