A second federal judge has blocked President Trump’s $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas, a setback for efforts to stop employers from undercutting American workers with cheaper foreign labor.

U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam in Oakland, California, on Wednesday stopped U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the State Department from putting the fee in place while a lawsuit moves forward.

The New York Post reported that Gilliam found the agencies failed to follow required rule-making steps before trying to collect the charge. The ruling grants a preliminary block sought by a coalition of unions, employers, and nonprofits that sued in October.

The decision marks the second time a federal court has frozen the same fee. A Boston judge temporarily blocked it in June in a separate case brought by 20 states. A Boston-based appeals court in July refused to pause that earlier order.

Trump imposed the $100,000 charge on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers after saying businesses had abused the program and replaced American employees with cheaper overseas labor. He pointed to presidential authority under federal immigration law to restrict entry of foreign nationals when their admission would harm U.S. interests.

Process fight stalls a worker-protection fee

Before the new charge, typical H-1B fees ran about $2,000 to $5,000, depending on the case. The jump to $100,000 was designed to change employer incentives and reduce the lure of lower-cost foreign hires.

The H-1B program issues 65,000 visas each year, plus another 20,000 for workers with advanced degrees. Approvals usually last three to six years. Those numbers help explain why the fee quickly drew lawsuits from groups that rely on the pipeline.

Gilliam, appointed by former President Barack Obama, did not decide the ultimate legality of the fee itself. He focused on whether USCIS and the State Department skipped required rule-making before rolling it out. That process argument gave the plaintiffs an opening for a temporary halt.

Democracy Forward, a left-leaning legal group representing the plaintiffs, praised the outcome. Lawyer Steve Bressler said the ruling restored order after sudden disruption.

"Today’s decision... protects a system that was thrown into chaos overnight,"

Reuters reported the same statement and noted that the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The fee had been set to expire September 21. Trump recently extended it for another year, keeping the policy live even as courts weighed the challenges.

Judicial friction over executive immigration moves is not new. Courts have also weighed in on other Trump administration steps, including a case in which a federal appeals court cleared related historical-display decisions tied to administration priorities.

Other lawsuits keep the pressure on

In August, the Department of Homeland Security moved to lock in a permanent fee of about $103,000. Once finalized, that permanent version is expected to face its own court fights. The current lawsuits center on whether the president can set this kind of charge on his own, separate from whatever permanent-rule questions come later.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the country’s largest business lobbying group, filed a third lawsuit against the fee. The Chamber is appealing a judge’s decision that rejected its claim Trump lacked authority to impose it. Business interests and labor-aligned groups have found common cause in trying to stop the higher cost.

Trump’s team has paired the fee with other changes. The administration ordered tighter vetting of H-1B applicants and floated a new selection system that would favor higher-skilled, better-paid workers. Those steps aim at the same problem: a visa track that too often undercuts wages and opportunities for Americans already here.

Voters who want secure borders and lawful, high-skill immigration also expect the system not to become a discount labor channel. That is the core of the policy Trump advanced. Process objections from agencies’ paperwork timelines do not erase the underlying abuse he described.

Separate legal tracks continue to test how far courts will go in reviewing White House immigration tools. The Supreme Court cleared Trump to resume certain third-country deportation practices, showing that higher courts sometimes restore executive room after lower-court freezes.

Who benefits when the fee stays frozen

While the Oakland order holds, employers can avoid the $100,000 hit on new H-1B hires. That outcome favors companies and nonprofits that use the visas heavily. It leaves American workers without the price signal Trump wanted in place.

Plaintiffs framed the fee as overnight chaos. Trump framed the old system as a long-running rip-off of U.S. labor. Those two stories cannot both be the full picture. Cheap foreign replacements do not become fair just because a rule-making checklist was incomplete.

Gilliam’s order is temporary. It lasts only while the October lawsuit proceeds. The Boston block remains in its own lane. The Chamber appeal adds a third front. Multiple courts are now handling pieces of the same fight over presidential fee power and agency process.

Political lawfare around Trump has taken many forms this cycle, from courtroom stays to a lame-duck Democrat’s impeachment articles timed ahead of the midterms. The H-1B cases sit in that wider climate of constant legal pressure on administration policy.

None of the rulings so far settle whether Congress, the president, or the agencies own the last word on a deterrent fee this large. They do show how fast a worker-focused immigration change can be parked once activist litigants and business lobbies file.

Security and personnel questions around the president have stayed in the news as well, including an episode in which an armed man was caught scouting a Trump golf club ahead of a visit. Policy fights and protection concerns keep running on parallel tracks.

For now, the $100,000 fee is on ice in Gilliam’s courtroom. The administration’s stated goal, making it harder to swap out American workers for lower-cost H-1B hires, remains the policy Americans were told would be enforced.

Paperwork rulings should not become a permanent shield for a visa system that rewards wage undercutting. American workers deserve a labor market that puts them first, not another freeze that keeps the old incentives in place.