UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA AJAY KRISHNA GOURNENI, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Case No. 20-cv-892 (CRC) ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS, Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security, et al., Defendants. 1 MEMORANDUM OPINION Plaintiffs in this action are thirty-two individuals who in 2018 and 2019 filed petitions with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) to obtain visas through the EB-5 immigrant investor program. Although USCIS agreed to expedite the processing of plaintiffs’ petitions, many of them sat undecided for months. Plaintiffs commenced this action in April 2020, asking the Court to compel USCIS to adjudicate the outstanding petitions. Whatever caused the original delay in resolving plaintiffs’ petitions will remain a mystery, because as of May 2021 USCIS had either granted or denied all of them. That rendered this suit moot and divested the court of subject matter jurisdiction. The Court will, accordingly, grant defendants’ motion to dismiss the case. It will also deny plaintiffs’ motion to amend their 1 Plaintiffs initially sued Chad Wolf, the former Acting Director of DHS, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, the former Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Director of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service, and Sarah Kendall, the former Chief of the Immigrant Investor Program Office at United States Citizen and Immigration Services, in their official capacities. These defendants have been automatically substituted with the analogous current officials under Fed. R. Civ. P. 25(d). complaint to add new plaintiffs who are allegedly awaiting adjudication of different EB-5 petitions. I. Background A. Plaintiffs’ Visa Petitions Section 203(b)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (known as the “EB-5 program”) allows foreign nationals to apply for employment-based immigrant visas if they have invested at least $500,000 (or $1 million, if not in a qualifying rural area) in a new commercial enterprise that will create at least ten jobs in the United States. 8 U.S.C. § 1153(b)(5)(A)–(D); see also 8 C.F.R § 204.6(a)–(j). Plaintiffs invested the required sums into one such enterprise— an equestrian center and resort near Asheville, North Carolina—in the hopes of obtaining lawful permanent resident status. Compl. ¶ 4, ECF No. 1. The equestrian center project is sponsored by the Appalachian EB-5 Regional Center. Compl. ¶ 56. Although not mentioned in the complaint, EB-5 Regional Centers are privately-operated organizations that sponsor EB-5- eligible commercial ventures, recruit immigrant investors, and coordinate the associated visa petitions. The Appalachian Regional Center filed an application for the equestrian-center project in November 2016, along with a request to expedite processing of the investor visa petitions. USCIS approved the project and granted the expedition request in 2017. Compl. ¶¶ 58–59, 72. There were 353 petitions filed in connection with the equestrian center project, and USCIS approved 271 of them before plaintiffs filed suit. Compl. ¶ 77. Plaintiffs allege that some of the petitions were processed within a few weeks, while others had been pending for over a year, with no discernable pattern. Id. ¶¶ 77, 78, 80. Each of the plaintiffs filed a petition …
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